Highly dispersed electrocatalyst by carbo-thermal shock for $CO_2$ reduction

Abstract

Carbon monoxide is main intermediate for making useful carbon fuels from $CO_2$ which needs to be reduced because it can rise temperature of earth dramatically. Gold is known for metal which has the highest CO production. However, Gold single metal already have been a lot of researched on CO production over 99% Faradaic Efficiencies by controlling structure and surface treatment. Therefore, Multi-metallic electrocatalyst (MMEC) which can control binding energy of the metal surface to the intermediate by introduction of other metals have recently become popular with also effective things in terms of cost. However, conventional method is generally limited to their thermodynamically favorable structure which cannot make homogeneous structure with metals which have immiscible properties. Nowadays, homogeneous alloys have great attraction because their distinctive structure and high tunability in electronic states with large metal-metal interface. In here, we make Multi-Metallic Nano Particles (MMNPs) by utilizing Carbo-Thermal-Shock (CTS) in new structures of atomic-mixed scale with high conductive carbon substrate to apply in $CO_2$ reduction reaction. To apply MMNPs by CTS for $CO_2$ reduction reaction, we conducted to set conditions of precursor loading, heating times, carbon substrate. From optimized condition setting, gold-copper MMNPs got high CO among atomic-mixed structures of MMNPs. In the future, we expect to use these conditions set to check the catalytic performance of various metal combinations over 3 elements with atomic-mixed structures for applying it for high CO production.