Self-supported bimetallic array superstructures for high-performance coupling electrosynthesis of formate and adipate

Li Liu; Yingchun He; Qing Li; Changsheng Cao; Minghong Huang; Dong-Dong Ma; Xin-Tao Wu; Qi-Long Zhu

doi:10.1002/EXP.20230043

Self-supported bimetallic array superstructures for high-performance coupling electrosynthesis of formate and adipate

Exploration (Beijing). 2023 Dec 21;4(3):20230043. doi: 10.1002/EXP.20230043. eCollection 2024 Jun.

Authors

Li Liu^{1

2}, Yingchun He^{1

2}, Qing Li^{1

2}, Changsheng Cao¹, Minghong Huang³, Dong-Dong Ma^{1

2}, Xin-Tao Wu^{1

4

2}, Qi-Long Zhu^{1

4

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter Chinese Academy of Sciences Fuzhou China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing China.
³ School of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Technology Sydney Ultimo New South Wales Australia.
⁴ Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China Fuzhou China.

Abstract

The coupling electrosynthesis involving CO₂ upgrade conversion is of great significance for the sustainable development of the environment and energy but is challenging. Herein, we exquisitely constructed the self-supported bimetallic array superstructures from the Cu(OH)₂ array architecture precursor, which can enable high-performance coupling electrosynthesis of formate and adipate at the anode and the cathode, respectively. Concretely, the faradaic efficiencies (FEs) of CO₂-to-formate and cyclohexanone-to-adipate conversion simultaneously exceed 90% at both electrodes with excellent stabilities. Such high-performance coupling electrosynthesis is highly correlated with the porous nanosheet array superstructure of CuBi alloy as the cathode and the nanosheet-on-nanowire array superstructure of CuNi hydroxide as the anode. Moreover, compared to the conventional electrolysis process, the cell voltage is substantially reduced while maintaining the electrocatalytic performance for coupling electrosynthesis in the two-electrode electrolyzer with the maximal FE_formate and FE_adipate up to 94.2% and 93.1%, respectively. The experimental results further demonstrate that the bimetal composition modulates the local electronic structures, promoting the reactions toward the target products. Prospectively, our work proposes an instructive strategy for constructing adaptive self-supported superstructures to achieve efficient coupling electrosynthesis.

Keywords: coupling electrosynthesis; electrocatalysis; superstructures.