Guiding catalytic CO reduction to ethanol with copper grain boundaries.

The grain boundaries (GBs) in copper (Cu) electrocatalysts have been suggested as active sites for CO electroreduction to ethanol. Nevertheless, the mechanisms are still elusive. Herein, we describe how GBs tune the activity and selectivity for ethanol on two representative Cu-GB models, namely Cu∑3/(111) GB and Cu∑5/(100) GB, using joint first-principles calculations and experiments. The unique geometric structures on the GBs facilitate the adsorption of bidentate intermediates, *COOH and *CHO, which are crucial for CO activation and CO protonation. The decreased CO-CHO coupling barriers on the GBs can be rationalized kinetics analysis. Furthermore, when introducing GBs into Cu (100), the product is selectively switched from ethylene to ethanol, due to the stabilization effect for *CHCHO and inapposite geometric structure for *O adsorption, which are validated by experimental trends. An overall 12.5 A current and a single-pass conversion of 5.18% for ethanol can be achieved over the synthesized Cu-GB catalyst by scaling up the electrode into a 25 cm membrane electrode assembly system.