Accelerating CO Electroreduction to Multicarbon Products via Synergistic Electric-Thermal Field on Copper Nanoneedles.

Electrochemical CO reduction is a promising way to mitigate CO emissions and close the anthropogenic carbon cycle. Among products from CORR, multicarbon chemicals, such as ethylene and ethanol with high energy density, are more valuable. However, the selectivity and reaction rate of C production are unsatisfactory due to the sluggish thermodynamics and kinetics of C-C coupling.

Iron phthalocyanine with coordination induced electronic localization to boost oxygen reduction reaction.

Iron phthalocyanine (FePc) is a promising non-precious catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Unfortunately, FePc with plane-symmetric FeN site usually exhibits an unsatisfactory ORR activity due to its poor O adsorption and activation. Here, we report an axial Fe-O coordination induced electronic localization strategy to improve its O adsorption, activation and thus the ORR performance.

Graphitic Carbon Nitride with Dopant Induced Charge Localization for Enhanced Photoreduction of CO to CH.

The photoreduction of CO to hydrocarbon products has attracted much attention because it provides an avenue to directly synthesize value-added carbon-based fuels and feedstocks using solar energy. Among various photocatalysts, graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) has emerged as an attractive metal-free visible-light photocatalyst due to its advantages of earth-abundance, nontoxicity, and stability. Unfortunately, its photocatalytic efficiency is seriously limited by charge carriers' ready recombination and their low reaction dynamics.