Probing CO Reduction Pathways for Copper Catalysis Using an Ionic Liquid as a Chemical Trapping Agent.

The key to fully leveraging the potential of the electrochemical CO reduction reaction (CO2RR) to achieve a sustainable solar-power-based economy is the development of high-performance electrocatalysts. The development process relies heavily on trial and error methods due to poor mechanistic understanding of the reaction. Demonstrated here is that ionic liquids (ILs) can be employed as a chemical trapping agent to probe CO2RR mechanistic pathways.