TY - JOUR
T1 - Tuning the products of CO 2 electroreduction on a Ni 3 Ga catalyst using carbon solid supports
AU - Paris, Aubrey R.
AU - Chu, An T.
AU - O’Brien, Conor B.
AU - Frick, Jessica J.
AU - Francis, Sonja Angelique
AU - Bocarsly, Andrew Bruce
N1 - Funding Information:
Financial support for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation under grant CHE-1308652. ARP and JJF acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant Nos. DGE-1148900 and DGE-1656466, respectively. COB thanks the Leach Summer Scholars Program for funding. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Certain alloys of nickel have recently been shown to reduce CO 2 to multi-carbon products electrochemically without the need for copper. Here we show that Ni 3 Ga thin film electrocatalysts on carbon electrodes discriminate between CO 2 reduction pathways and products based on their surface morphologies, which are controlled by catalyst-carbon support interactions. It is also observed that unsupported, bulk Ni 3 Ga reduces CO but not CO 2 . With this understanding, a tandem electrocatalyst utilizing two variants of the Ni 3 Ga material—one supported and one unsupported—was developed. In this two-electrode system, CO is generated from CO 2 on an electrode optimized for this process, and the CO is then further reduced to methanol in the same reactor. It appears that choice of carbon support impacts the morphology of Ni 3 Ga during the synthesis of the catalyst, thereby influencing the electrolysis product distribution.
AB - Certain alloys of nickel have recently been shown to reduce CO 2 to multi-carbon products electrochemically without the need for copper. Here we show that Ni 3 Ga thin film electrocatalysts on carbon electrodes discriminate between CO 2 reduction pathways and products based on their surface morphologies, which are controlled by catalyst-carbon support interactions. It is also observed that unsupported, bulk Ni 3 Ga reduces CO but not CO 2 . With this understanding, a tandem electrocatalyst utilizing two variants of the Ni 3 Ga material—one supported and one unsupported—was developed. In this two-electrode system, CO is generated from CO 2 on an electrode optimized for this process, and the CO is then further reduced to methanol in the same reactor. It appears that choice of carbon support impacts the morphology of Ni 3 Ga during the synthesis of the catalyst, thereby influencing the electrolysis product distribution.
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U2 - 10.1149/2.0791807jes
DO - 10.1149/2.0791807jes
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85054862072
SN - 0013-4651
VL - 165
SP - H385-H392
JO - Journal of the Electrochemical Society
JF - Journal of the Electrochemical Society
IS - 7
ER -