2021/10/15 by Yang Tang, Xinnan Mao, Ying Zhang +7 · 2 citations
Chemical Engineering · Energy · Materials Science · #Carbon dioxide utilization in catalysis #CO2 Reduction Techniques and Catalysts #Catalytic Processes in Materials Science
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-021-26316-6
openalex publication_date 2021/10/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
Abstract CO 2 hydrogenation has attracted great attention, yet the quest for highly-efficient catalysts is driven by the current disadvantages of poor activity, low selectivity, and ambiguous structure-performance relationship. We demonstrate here that C 3 N 4 -supported Cu single atom catalysts with tailored coordination structures, namely, Cu–N 4 and Cu–N 3 , can serve as highly selective and active catalysts for CO 2 hydrogenation at low temperature. The modulation of the coordination structure of Cu single atom is readily realized by simply altering the treatment parameters. Further investigations reveal that Cu–N 4 favors CO 2 hydrogenation to form CH 3 OH via the formate pathway, while Cu–N 3 tends to catalyze CO 2 hydrogenation to produce CO via the reverse water-gas-shift (RWGS) pathway. Significantly, the CH 3 OH productivity and selectivity reach 4.2 mmol g –1 h –1 and 95.5%, respectively, for Cu–N 4 single atom catalyst. We anticipate this work will promote the fundamental researches on the structure-performance relationship of catalysts.