Design of less than 1 nm Scale Spaces on SnO2 Nanoparticles for High-Performance Electrochemical CO2 Reduction

• Year

  2021

• Author

  AIMS-E

• Professor

  Prof. Stefan Ringe

• Journal

  Advanced Functional Materials (IF = 18.808)

• Abstract

  Professor Stefan Ringe in the department of Energy Science and Engineering at DGIST and his co workers designed less than 1nm scale spaces on SnO2 nanoparticles for high performance electrochemical CO2 reduction.
  
  In this paper, we present, to our best knowledge, the first application of the space-confinement approach to Sn-based nanoparticle electro catalysts. Specifically, LiET was employed to generate grain boundaries and a high density of tunable atomically or sub-nanoscale (<1 nm) sized pores or spaces in a commercially available pristine tin oxide (SnO2) catalyst structure. Both grain boundaries and SnO2. NPs with an interparticle spacing of less than 1nm (SnO2 X NP-s) exhibited a significant increase in formate selectivity.
  
  Finally, the stable operation of the SnO2 NP-s catalyst was demonstrated for CO2RR over 50 h with 80% selectivity of formate. The presented concept of sub-nanometer gap generation provides a new exciting avenue for the systematic design of highly selective and active electro catalysts for integration in practical devices.