Biosensors Journal
Open Access

Abstract

The rapid changes in the global climate during the last century have been extensively ascribed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. Efforts are then required to decrease the consumption of fossil fuels and to develop methods to produce renewable carbon- based fuels. One promising approach is artificial photosynthesis, a process in which solar energy is used to drive the reduction of CO2 to fuels or valuable chemicals. A pressing need exists to develop an efficient, robust, selective and earth-abundant catalyst for the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR), which can be used directly as a cathode in a photovoltaic-electrolyzer system or coated on an efficient light absorbing photocathode material in a photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell. Copper (Cu) is a non-toxic and earth-abundant catalyst for the CO2RR, and there are facile and scalable methods to make its nanostructures, etc. and as such it is arguably the best-studied catalyst for the CO2 reduction. However, its reported performance (considering selectivity, durability, and efficiency) so far is too low for practical applications. Herein, we present our efforts to nanoengineer efficient CO2RR catalysts. Among them, I will highlight our production of Cu(OH)2 nanowire arrays, synthesized by a facile and scalable solution growth method, for selective and durable CO2 reduction. The Cu(OH)2 nanowire array shows selective CO2 reduction to C2-C3 products, with a faradaic efficiency of ~40% for C2+ products. The catalysts exhibit durable CO2 reaction of over 24 hours with a minimal change in faradaic efficiency of each gas/liquid product and total faradaic efficiency. dfenning@eng.ucsd.edu

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