Self-organizing Ag-decorated nanoporous Cu by dealloying process

Abstract

The importance of copper-silver boundaries to produce alcohols or other high value products in CO2 reduction reaction has been reported recently, but the details of the copper and silver arrangement in catalytic applications has yet to be revealed clearly. In this work, we demonstrated experimental evidences of migration by transmission electron microscope (TEM) images during dealloying process and after 2 h of CO2 reduction reaction in Ag-decorated nanoporous Cu. In conclusion, the copper and silver from the trinary alloy Cu-Ag-Al would rearrange themselves into nanoporous structure of copper-core decorated with silver after selective dealloying of Al for 15 min, while copper will move to the surface of nanoporous structure after 2 h of CO2 reduction reaction. This work shows a useful assumption of copper and silver migration during the dealloying process and after CO2 reduction reaction in atomic scale, which can provide details of the synthesis of nanoporous Cu-Ag electrocatalysts