Self-Supported Porous Carbon Nanofibers Decorated with Single Ni Atoms for Efficient CO 2 Electroreduction

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces 2023-01, Vol.15 (1), p.1376-1383
• Main Authors: Wang, Hui, Chuai, Hongyuan, Chen, Xiaoyi, Lin, Jianlong, Zhang, Sheng, Ma, Xinbin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c19502

Single-atom catalysts within M-N-C structures are efficient for electrochemical CO reduction. However, most of them are powdered and require a coating process to load on the electrode. Herein, we developed a facile approach to the synthesis of large-scale self-supported porous carbon nanofiber electrodes directly decorated with atomically dispersed nickel active sites using facile electrospinning, where poly(methyl methacrylate) was employed to tune well the distributions of pores located in carbon nanofibers. The above self-supported carbon nanofibers were applied as a gas diffusion electrode to achieve 94.3% CO Faraday efficiency and 170 mA cm current density, which can be attributed to the effects of rich mesoporous structures favorable for adsorption and mass transfer of CO and single nickel catalysts effectively converting CO to CO. This work provides an efficient strategy to fabricate self-supported electrodes and may accelerate the progress toward industrial applications of single-atom catalysts in the field of CO electroreduction.