Xinyue Wang, Yuanjun Chen, Feng Li, Rui Kai Miao, Jianan Erick Huang, Zilin Zhao, Xiao-Yan Li, Roham Dorakhan, Senlin Chu, Jinhong Wu, Sixing Zheng, Weiyan Ni, Dongha Kim, Sungjin Park, Yongxiang Liang, Adnan Ozden, Pengfei Ou, Yang Hou, David Sinton, Edward H Sargent
Electrosynthesis of acetate from CO offers the prospect of a low-carbon-intensity route to this valuable chemical--but only once sufficient selectivity, reaction rate and stability are realized. It is a high priority to achieve the protonation of the relevant intermediates in a controlled fashion, and to achieve this while suppressing the competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and while steering multicarbon (C2+ ) products to a single valuable product--an example of which is acetate. Here we report interface engineering to achieve solid/liquid/gas triple-phase interface regulation, and we find that it leads to site-selective protonation of intermediates and the preferential stabilization of the ketene intermediates: this, we find, leads to improved selectivity and energy efficiency toward acetate...
January 19, 2024: Nature Communications