Improving the roughness of copper working electrode through electroless deposition for carbon dioxide reduction reaction

Electrocatalytic CO2 conversion into usable fuels (CO, CH4, C2H4, and HCOOH) is a promising approach to mitigate the greenhouse effect and the energy deficit. Herein, we employ the wet etching process to significantly enhance the surface roughness of the copper foil, followed by deposition of Cu particles on the surface-etched copper foil (Cu NPs/Cu foil) for electrochemical CO2 reduction. FESEM and AFM results confirms the morphology and roughness changes. Introducing glycine to the electrolyte increase the Faraday efficiency (FE) of the resulting products. Upon adding 5 x 10-5 mM glycine significantly improves the FEs 10.1 % CO, 8.7 % CH4, 11.7 % C2H4, and 44.5 % HCOOH, with 75.0 % as C1 and C2 compounds. Concurrently, hydrogen production decreases to 20.2 % at a potential of -1.4 V utilizing roughened Cu NPs/Cu foil as a catalyst. These results shed light on the factors contributing to increased hydrocarbons and formic acid production with enhanced surface roughness of Cu foil.