Nanoparticle Silver Catalysts That Show Enhanced Activity for Carbon Dioxide Electrolysis

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• 作者：Amin Salehi-Khojin ; Huei-Ru Molly Jhong ; Brian A. Rosen ; Wei Zhu ; Sichao Ma ; Paul J. A. Kenis ; Richard I. Masel
• 刊名：The Journal of Physical Chemistry C
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：January 31, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：117
• 期：4
• 页码：1627-1632
• 全文大小：397K
• 年卷期：v.117,no.4(January 31, 2013)
• ISSN：1932-7455

文摘

Electrochemical conversion of CO₂ has been proposed both as a way to reduce CO₂ emissions and as a source of renewable fuels and chemicals, but conversion rates need improvement before the process will be practical. In this article, we show that the rate of CO₂ conversion per unit surface area is about 10 times higher on 5 nm silver nanoparticles than on bulk silver even though measurements on single crystal catalysts show much smaller variations in rate. The enhancement disappears on 1 nm particles. We attribute this effect to a volcano effect associated with changes of the binding energy of key intermediates as the particle size decreases. These results demonstrate that nanoparticle catalysts have unique properties for CO₂ conversion.