Congratulations to Petru for his JACS paper!
© Effect of the oxide porosity on the CO2 electroreduction - CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 .
Want to learn more about tuning catalysts for efficient electrochemical conversion of CO2?
Catalyst design is a central challenge for a sustainable society. Geometric and electronic effects play an imporant role in catalyst design. Understanding the interplay of these effects and how to tune them is essential to design more efficient catalysts. Herein, we design a catalytic platform to investigate and tune geometric and electronic effects in the electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction. This platform consists of cubic Cu nanocrystals coated with an alumina shell of tunable porosity. We find that increasing porosity shifts the balance toward electronic effects, which eventually dominate over the native geometric contribution. This shift in turn governs the selectivity trends in the CO2 reduction reaction, revealing that active sites under electronic effect are more sensitive to changes in the electrolyte microenvironment. The insights gained establish design principles that bridge active-site structure and microenvironment engineering for CO2RR and beyond.
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This publication was created as part of NCCR Catalysis, a National Centre of Competence in Research funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Active Sites under Electronic Effect Are More Sensitive to Microenvironment in CO2 Electroreduction, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2025, 147, 29, 25517–25526