CO Overall Splitting by a Bifunctional Metal-Free Electrocatalyst.

Photo/electrochemical CO splitting is impeded by the low cost-effective catalysts for key reactions: CO reduction (CDRR) and water oxidation. A porous silicon and nitrogen co-doped carbon (SiNC) nanomaterial by a facile pyrolyzation was developed as a metal-free bifunctional electrocatalyst. CO -to-CO and oxygen evolution (OER) partial current density under neutral conditions were enhanced by two orders of magnitude in the Tafel regime on SiNC relative to single-doped comparisons beyond their specific area gap. The photovoltaic-driven CO splitting device with SiNC electrodes imitating photosynthesis yielded an overall solar-to-chemical efficiency of advanced 12.5 % (by multiplying energy efficiency of CO splitting cell and photovoltaic device) at only 650 mV overpotential. Mechanism studies suggested the elastic electron structure of -Si(O)-C-N- unit in SiNC as the highly active site for CDRR and OER simultaneously by lowering the free energy of CDRR and OER intermediates adsorption.