Steering surface reconstruction of copper with electrolyte additives for CO electroreduction.

Electrocatalytic CO reduction to value-added hydrocarbon products using metallic copper (Cu) catalysts is a potentially sustainable approach to facilitate carbon neutrality. However, Cu metal suffers from unavoidable and uncontrollable surface reconstruction during electrocatalysis, which can have either adverse or beneficial effects on its electrocatalytic performance. In a break from the current catalyst design path, we propose a strategy guiding the reconstruction process in a favorable direction to improve the performance.

Confined small-sized cobalt catalysts stimulate carbon-chain growth reversely by modifying ASF law of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.

Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) is a promising technology to convert syngas derived from non-petroleum-based resources to valuable chemicals or fuels. Selectively producing target products will bring great economic benefits, but unfortunately it is theoretically limited by Anderson-Schulz-Flory (ASF) law. Herein, we synthesize size-uniformed cobalt nanocrystals embedded into mesoporous SiO supports, which is likely the structure of water-melon seeds inside pulps.