Hydroxide promotes carbon dioxide electroreduction to ethanol on copper via tuning of adsorbed hydrogen

Abstract

Producing liquid fuels such as ethanol from CO₂, H₂O, and renewable electricity offers a route to store sustainable energy. The search for efficient electrocatalysts for the CO₂ reduction reaction relies on tuning the adsorption strength of carbonaceous intermediates. Here, we report a complementary approach in which we utilize hydroxide and oxide doping of a catalyst surface to tune the adsorbed hydrogen on Cu. Density functional theory studies indicate that this doping accelerates water dissociation and changes the hydrogen adsorption energy on Cu. We synthesize and investigate a suite of metal-hydroxide-interface-doped-Cu catalysts, and find that the most efficient, Ce(OH)_x-doped-Cu, exhibits an ethanol Faradaic efficiency of 43% and a partial current density of 128 mA cm⁻². Mechanistic studies, wherein we combine investigation of hydrogen evolution performance with the results of operando Raman spectroscopy, show that adsorbed hydrogen hydrogenates surface *HCCOH, a key intermediate whose fate determines branching to ethanol versus ethylene.