Isolated Tin Enhanced CO Coverage-Regulation on SnCu Alloy for Selective CO Electroreduction to C Products.

Electricity-powered C─C coupling of CO represents an attractive strategy for producing valuable commodity chemicals with renewable energy, but it is still challenging to gain high C selectivity at high current density. Here, a SnCu single-atom alloy (SAA) is reported with isolated Sn atom embedded into the Cu lattice, as efficient ectrocatalyst for CO reduction. The as prepared SnCu-SAA catalyst shows a maximal C Faradaic efficiency of 79.3% at 800 mA cm, which can be kept stable for at least 16 h. The combination of in situ spectroscopy and DFT calculation reveal that the introduced Sn atom promote the activation of CO to CO, and enhance the CO coverage on SnCu-SAA. As results, the reaction barrier of C─C coupling pathway is significantly reduced, boosting the generation of C products. These findings offer a novel sight for fabricating multicarbon products from CO via regulation the concentration of intermediates on catalytic interface.