Site-Specific Axial Oxygen Coordinated FeN4 Active Sites for Highly Selective Electroreduction of Carbon Dioxide

Regulating the coordination environment via heteroatoms to break the symmetrical electronic structure of M-N active sites provides a promising route to engineer metal-nitrogen-carbon catalysts for electrochemical CO reduction reaction. However, it remains challenging to realize a site-specific intro...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Zhang, Ting, Han, Xu, Biset-Peiró, Martí, Li, Jian, Zhang, Xuan, Tang, Peng-Yi, Yang, Bo, Zheng, Lirong, Morante, Javier, Arbiol, Jordi
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/279035
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/279035
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:CO generation
CO2 electoreduction
FeN4-O active sites
Metal-organic frameworks
Single atom catalysts
Descripción
Sumario:Regulating the coordination environment via heteroatoms to break the symmetrical electronic structure of M-N active sites provides a promising route to engineer metal-nitrogen-carbon catalysts for electrochemical CO reduction reaction. However, it remains challenging to realize a site-specific introduction of heteroatoms at atomic level due to their energetically unstable nature. Here, this paper reports a facile route via using an oxygen- and nitrogen-rich metal–organic framework (MOF) (IRMOF-3) as the precursor to construct the Fe-O and Fe-N chelation, simultaneously, resulting in an atomically dispersed axial O-coordinated FeN active site. Compared to the FeN active sites without O coordination, the formed FeN-O sites exhibit much better catalytic performance toward CO, reaching a maximum FE of 95% at −0.50 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, such performance exceeds that of the existing Fe-N-C-based catalysts derived from sole N-rich MOFs. Density functional theory calculations indicate that the axial O-coordination regulates the binding energy of intermediates in the reaction pathways, resulting in a smoother desorption of CO and increased energy for the competitive hydrogen production.