TY - JOUR
T1 - A high-performance oxygen evolution catalyst in neutral-pH for sunlight-driven CO2 reduction
AU - Zhou, Li Qin
AU - Ling, Chen
AU - Zhou, Hui
AU - Wang, Xiang
AU - Liao, Joseph
AU - Reddy, Gunugunuri K.
AU - Deng, Liangzi
AU - Peck, Torin C.
AU - Zhang, Ruigang
AU - Whittingham, M. Stanley
AU - Wang, Chongmin
AU - Chu, Ching Wu
AU - Yao, Yan
AU - Jia, Hongfei
N1 - Funding Information:
C.M.W. thanks the support of LDRD of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for carrying out part of the TEM work, which was carried in the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a national scientific user facility sponsored by DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at PNNL. PNNL is operated by Battelle for the Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05–76RLO1830. H.Z. and M.S.W. thank the support of NECCES, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0012583. C.-W.C. acknowledges support by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant No. FA9550-15-1-0236, the T.L.L. Temple Foundation, the John J. and Rebecca Moores Endowment, and the State of Texas through the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston. Y.Y. thanks the support of Scialog: Advanced Energy Storage award from Research Corporation for Science Advancement (award number 25751), UH Technical Gap Fund, and UH High Priority Area Large Equipment Grant.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - The efficiency of sunlight-driven reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2), a process mimicking the photosynthesis in nature that integrates the light harvester and electrolysis cell to convert CO2 into valuable chemicals, is greatly limited by the sluggish kinetics of oxygen evolution in pH-neutral conditions. Current non-noble metal oxide catalysts developed to drive oxygen evolution in alkaline solution have poor performance in neutral solutions. Here we report a highly active and stable oxygen evolution catalyst in neutral pH, Brownmillerite Sr2GaCoO5, with the specific activity about one order of magnitude higher than that of widely used iridium oxide catalyst. Using Sr2GaCoO5 to catalyze oxygen evolution, the integrated CO2 reduction achieves the average solar-to-CO efficiency of 13.9% with no appreciable performance degradation in 19 h of operation. Our results not only set a record for the efficiency in sunlight-driven CO2 reduction, but open new opportunities towards the realization of practical CO2 reduction systems.
AB - The efficiency of sunlight-driven reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2), a process mimicking the photosynthesis in nature that integrates the light harvester and electrolysis cell to convert CO2 into valuable chemicals, is greatly limited by the sluggish kinetics of oxygen evolution in pH-neutral conditions. Current non-noble metal oxide catalysts developed to drive oxygen evolution in alkaline solution have poor performance in neutral solutions. Here we report a highly active and stable oxygen evolution catalyst in neutral pH, Brownmillerite Sr2GaCoO5, with the specific activity about one order of magnitude higher than that of widely used iridium oxide catalyst. Using Sr2GaCoO5 to catalyze oxygen evolution, the integrated CO2 reduction achieves the average solar-to-CO efficiency of 13.9% with no appreciable performance degradation in 19 h of operation. Our results not only set a record for the efficiency in sunlight-driven CO2 reduction, but open new opportunities towards the realization of practical CO2 reduction systems.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-019-12009-8
DO - 10.1038/s41467-019-12009-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 31501446
AN - SCOPUS:85071978088
VL - 10
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 4081
ER -