Thread Content
Recently, the Hefei Center for Microscale Materials Science at the University of Science and Technology of China, along with the research group led by Professor Zeng Jie from the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, used cadmium selenide sulfide alloy nanorods with adjustable composition as catalysts to efficiently electroreduce carbon dioxide into syngas. This catalyst based on cadmium selenide sulfide alloy nanorods exhibits high activity and stability in the electroreduction of carbon dioxide, and it enables the regulation of the composition ratio of syngas over a wide range. Published on January 9th in the journal Advanced Materials (Adv. Mater. 2018, doi: 10.1002/adma.201705872), the research is titled “Achieving the widest range of syngas proportions at high current density over cadmium sulphoselenide nanorods in CO2 electroreduction”. The co-first authors of the paper are doctoral student He Rong and master’s student Zhang An. Syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is an important synthetic raw material in the petrochemical industry. For different chemical processes, the optimal composition ratio of syngas required also varies. Traditional methods for producing syngas include coal gasification and natural gas reforming, both of which require the use of non-renewable resources. In contrast, using carbon dioxide and water as raw materials and electroreducing carbon dioxide in an aqueous solution is an ideal method for sustainably producing syngas. However, current catalysts for the electroreduction of carbon dioxide struggle to regulate the composition ratio of syngas over a wide range while maintaining high current densities. To address this issue, researchers have recently designed and synthesized cadmium selenide sulfide alloy nanorod catalysts with adjustable components, using liquid-phase synthesis techniques. The researchers found that the higher the selenium content in the catalyst, the more hydrogen intermediates are produced during the reaction, and the higher the proportion of hydrogen in the syngas product. Studies show that at a overpotential of -1.2 V, the ratio of carbon monoxide to hydrogen in the product syngas can be freely adjusted between 4:1 and 1:4. Meanwhile, the current density of syngas regardless of its composition ratio exceeds 25 mA/cm-2. Furthermore, in the stability test involving 10 hours of continuous use of this catalyst, the current density remained essentially stable, and the composition ratio of the produced syngas also stayed largely unchanged. This research was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Key Research Projects in Frontier Sciences, **Major Scientific Research Programs**, the National Natural Science Foundation, and other funding initiatives.