Metal-Organic Layers Leading to Atomically Thin Bismuthene for Efficient Carbon Dioxide Electroreduction to Liquid Fuel.

Electrochemical reduction of CO to valuable fuels is appealing for CO fixation and energy storage. However, the development of electrocatalysts with high activity and selectivity in a wide potential window is challenging. Herein, atomically thin bismuthene (Bi-ene) is pioneeringly obtained by an in situ electrochemical transformation from ultrathin bismuth-based metal-organic layers. The few-layer Bi-ene, which possesses a great mass of exposed active sites with high intrinsic activity, has a high selectivity (ca. 100 %), large partial current density, and quite good stability in a potential window exceeding 0.35 V toward formate production. It even deliver current densities that exceed 300.0 mA cm without compromising selectivity in a flow-cell reactor. Using in situ ATR-IR spectra and DFT analysis, a reaction mechanism involving HCO for formate generation was unveiled, which brings new fundamental understanding of CO reduction.