Adjusting Local CO Confinement in Porous-Shell Ag@Cu Catalysts for Enhancing C–C Coupling toward CO₂ Eletroreduction

Abstract

Tuning the local confinement of reaction intermediates is of pivotal significance to promote C-C coupling for enhancing the selectivity for multicarbon (C₂₊) products toward CO₂ electroreduction. Herein, we have gained insights into the confinement effect of local CO concentration for enhanced C-C coupling over core-shell Ag@Cu catalysts by tuning the pore diameters within porous Cu shells. During CO₂ electroreduction, the core-shell Ag@Cu catalysts with an average pore diameter of 4.9 nm within the Cu shells (Ag@Cu-p4.9) exhibited the highest Faradaic efficiency of 73.7% for C₂₊ products at 300 mA cm^-2 among the three Ag@Cu catalysts. Finite-element-method simulations revealed that the pores with a diameter of 4.9 nm in Cu conspicuously enhanced the local CO concentration. On the basis of <i>in situ</i> attenuated total reflection surface-enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy measurements, Ag@Cu-p4.9 exhibited the highest surface coverage of adsorbed CO intermediates with a linear adsorption configuration due to the confinement effect, thus facilitating C-C coupling.