Planar chlorination engineering induced symmetry-broken single-atom site catalyst for enhanced CO2 electroreduction

Abstract Breaking the geometric symmetry of traditional metal-N 4 sites and further boosting catalytic activity are significant but challenging. Herein, planar chlorination engineering is proposed for successfully converting the traditional Zn-N 4 site with low activity and selectivity for CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) into highly active Zn-N 3 site with broken symmetry. The optimal catalyst Zn-SA/CNCl-1000 displays a highest faradaic efficiency for CO (FE CO ) around 97 ± 3% and good stability during 50 h test at high current density of 200 mA/cm 2 in zero-gap membrane electrode assembly (MEA) electrolyzer, with promising application in industrial catalysis. At -0.93 V vs. RHE, the partial current density…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 22405261, 2022YFB2404300, 22409159, 22109123, 52273231
• CP
  China Postdoctoral Science Foundation

  Awards: 2023TQ0341, 2023M731785, GZB20230706, BX20220159, 2023M743369
• NS
  Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province

  Award: 2022CFD089
• UO
  University of Science and Technology of China
• NS
  National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center
• NS
  Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province

  Award: 2408085QB046
• NP
  National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents

  Award: BX20220159
• NK
  National Key Research and Development Program of China

  Award: 2022YFB2404300
• FR
  Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities

  Award: WK2060000068
• BS
  Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility