SnO_2 Catalyzed Simultaneous Reinforcement of Carbon Dioxide Adsorption and Activation Towards Electrochemical Conversion of CO_2 to HCOOH

摘要

The increasing CO_2 content in the earth's atmosphere has provoked the concerns about global warming. Electrochemical CO_2 reduction reaction (CO_2RR) has been identified as an attractive route meeting both economic and environmental requirements. HCOOH with advantages of easy storage and transportation is an important chemical intermediate and renewable energy carrier. Therefore, transferring CO_2 into HCOOH is a promising and desirable option to reduce the CO_2 emissions and generate renewable energy simultaneously. Tin based materials are promising candidates for CO_2RR to HCOOH. The unsaturated 0=0 bonds in metallic oxide can store CO_2 by bonding the unshared pair of electrons of CO_2. Simultaneously, the activation energy barrier of CO_2RR is lower because those electrons can transfer back from defects to the adsorbates and alter the d-band center of catalysts interacting with the adsorbed CO_2. Herein, a highly efficient wavy SnO_2 (Denoted as NW-SnO_2) electrocatalyst having abundant low coordinated sites, oxygen vacancies and gain boundaries was synthesized by a facile and cost-effective method, which is advantageous in terms of its large scale practical applications.