Activating Inert Perovskite Oxides for CO Electroreduction via Slight Cu Doping in B-Sites.

Perovskite oxides are proven as a striking platform for developing high-performance electrocatalysts. Nonetheless, a significant portion of them show CO electroreduction (CORR) inertness. Here a simple but effective strategy is reported to activate inert perovskite oxides (e.g., SrTiO) for CORR through slight Cu doping in B-sites. For the proof-of-concept catalysts of SrTiCuO (x = 0.025, 0.05, and 0.1), Cu doping (even in trace amount, e.g., x = 0.025) can not only create active, stable CuO octahedra, increase electrochemical active surface area, and accelerate charge transfer, but also significantly regulate the electronic structure (e.g., up-shifted band center) to promote activation/adsorption of reaction intermediates. Benefiting from these merits, the stable SrTiCuO catalysts feature great improvements (at least an order of magnitude) in CORR activity and selectivity for high-order products (i.e., CH and C), compared to the SrTiO parent. This work provides a new avenue for the conversion of inert perovskite oxides into high-performance electrocatalysts toward CORR.