Publication date: 21st July 2025
The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) offers an incredible opportunity to capture and store CO2 and renewable energy in valuable platform chemicals and fuels, driving the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources.1 Growing interest is being directed toward decoupling the reaction into stepwise processes: CO2-to-carbon monoxide (CO) conversion followed by CO-to-C2+ products to boost CO availability at active sites. Moreover, compared to the parent CO2 reduction reaction (CO2R), CO reduction (COR) is not affected by the (bi)carbonate issue and is thereby compatible with the highly alkaline media, reported to help C2+ product selectivity.2
Bimetallic Cu-Zn materials have been extensively studied for their ability to facilitate the formation and stabilization of polarized Cuδ+ species, which are critical for facilitating C-C coupling.3 In this work, we investigated the selectivity variations that arise from CO2 and CO reduction in catholyte-flow and zero-gap electrolyzers using CuZn-based gas diffusion electrodes.4 The presence of zinc appears to promote selectivity towards ethanol, compared to ethylene production, as demonstrated by the results obtained from control experiments on copper oxide. Under CO2 reduction conditions in the catholyte flow cell, we demonstrated that the catalyst pre-reduction leads to a marked change in selectivity at 100 mA cm-2, with ethanol becoming the dominant CO2R product. Interestingly, when switching to pure CO, a remarkable Faradaic Efficiency of approximately 70% toward C2 products was achieved at an average cathodic potential of -2.1 V vs Ag/AgCl. The stability of the system at 100 mA cm-2 was evaluated over approximately three hours, during which a constant FEC2H4 of 35% was demonstrated. Operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements in fluorescence mode were conducted at the BESSY II synchrotron to uncover the cause of the superior activity toward C2 on bimetallic Cu-Zn materials, using a zero-gap cell that mimics the ex-situ cell employed for laboratory data. Our investigation highlights the importance of considering multiple factors to accelerate the practical application of the CuZn bimetallic systems at a larger scale.
The financial support of the SunCoChem project (Grant Agreement No 862192) and the FlowPhotoChem project (Grant Agreement No 862453) of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action programme is acknowledged. The authors acknowledge funding from the project PNRR – Partenariati estesi – “NEST – Network 4 Energy Sustainable Transition”. We also thank HZB for experimental access at the KMC-2 beamline, including support from Dr. Götz Schuck. The Foundation Blanceflor Boncompagni Ludovisi is acknowledged for supporting research mobility.
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