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AKE: Arbeitskreis Energie
AKE 8: CO2 Electro-Reduction
AKE 8.2: Vortrag
Montag, 7. März 2016, 17:30–17:45, H3
Activity of Cu-Au alloy NPs towards the electrochemical reduction of CO2: A compositional dependence study — •Motiar Rahaman, Abhijit Dutta, and Peter Broekmann — Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freistrasse 3, Bern 3012, Switzerland
Our work focuses on the optimization of Cu-Au catalyst composition towards the electro-reduction of CO2 in aqueous media. We have synthesized various compositions of Cu-Au alloy nano-particles (NPs) directly on a technical vulcan carbon support where the chemical composition of the NPs were systematically varied from pure Au to pure Cu. The structure, composition and the electrochemical activity of these NPs with regard to the CO2 electro-reduction were studied by a combination of microscopic/spectroscopic methods (TEM, EDAX, XR and XPS) and electrochemical measurements (LSV and chronoamperometry). The formed gaseous and liquid products from the CO2 electro-reduction have been analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) and ion chromatography (IC) techniques respectively. The catalytic activity of Cu-Au alloy composition towards CO2 reduction and the product distribution is found to be strongly dependent on the particular Au content. In case of Cu17Au83 alloy, CO is observed as main reduction product whereas, in case of Cu84Au16 alloy, hydrocarbons are dominantly produced with formate as side product. However the best hydrocarbon efficiency is observed for the Cu67Au33 alloy where ethylene and ethane are produced with substantial faradaic efficiencies.