A novel N, Fe-Decorated carbon nanotube/carbon nanosheet architecture for efficient CO2 reduction

The development of high-performance electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) is a prerequisite to enable CO2-to-fuels electrolysis a feasible solution for reaching a carbon neutral cycle and producing value-added fuels. In this work, we report the design of a novel nanostructured electrocatalyst consisting of carbon nanotube/carbon nanosheet architecture with N and Fe doping (NFe-CNT/CNS) by a SiO2-protected calcination strategy. The hierarchical structure of CNT/CNS affords abundant N-induced defects and Fe similar to N species as highly active sites and facilitates mass transportation, and carbon nanotube also offers a smooth route for charge transfer in the CO2RR process. These synergistic merits afford NFe-CNT/CNS with high performance for CO2RR in terms of a maximum FE of 69% at a low overpotential of 0.48 V, a small Tafel slope of 89 mV dec(-1), and enhanced stability for CO production in aqueous solution. The findings demonstrate that the integration of structural design and dopants optimization is effective to boost electrocatalytic activity of nanocarbons for CO2 reduction. (c) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.