New Generation of Nanocatalysts for CO2 Electrochemical Conversion into Fuels

Electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction to fuels/valuable chemicals is a carbon-neutral process, contributing to sustainability and helping to mitigate potential climate change. If the process run by utilizing renewable energy, it can also be used to resolve intermittency issue associated with renewable energy (such as solar and wind energy) via storing energy into chemical bonds. Hence, it is a highly desirable goal to convert CO₂ into fuel precursors such as carbon monoxide, ethylene, methanol, or formic acid using renewable sources of energy (i.e. solar, geothermal, wind, etc.) as the energy input for the process, thereby presenting a convenient way to recycle CO₂ into fuels. The central problem with this approach, however, is the higher over-potential needed for the conversion of CO₂ into useful fuels, stability and poor product selectivity of the catalysts. Therefore, synthesis of new nanomaterials with merits of low cost, high efficiency, and outstanding properties is essential. Here, I will mainly discuss recently discovered non-noble metals catalysts, which can potentially replace noble metals for CO₂ electrochemical conversion process.