A Local Proton Source Enhances CO 2 Electroreduction to CO by a Molecular Fe Catalyst

Lending a Hand to CO 2 Reduction Although plants and microbes have been reducing CO 2 with ease for millennia, people still find it extremely challenging. A cost-effective synthetic scheme for transforming CO 2 into fuels and commodity chemicals would be a double boon, lowering atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gas while supplementing (and perhaps ultimately replacing) dwindling petroleum feedstocks. Toward this end, Costentin et al. (p. 90 ) show that an iron catalyst for the electrochemical reduction of CO 2 to CO gets an efficiency boost from phenol substituents appended to the ligand framework.