Electrocatalytic conversion of CO2 to hydrocarbon and alcohol products: Realities and prospects of Cu-based materials

Renewable energy has been a hot topic for sometimes due to its ability to minimize the global dependence on fossil fuels which is drastically declining, and more importantly the need to alleviate the emission of greenhouse gases. The uncontrollable releases of CO2 into the atmosphere as a result of excessive utilization of carboncontaining fossil fuel contributes significantly to the daily climate change and global warming. Numerous litera ture hasdemonstrated the uniqueness of Cu-based electrocatalysts to convert CO2 to useful fuels including alcohol, aldehydes and hydrocarbons. This review is an attempt to look into the expectation, realities of the mechanism on Cu electrodes and its prospect to convert CO2 to aldehydes, hydrocarbon and alcohol products by away of utilizing CO2 for industrial feedstocks. In addition, we present some realized advancements on the pathways for CO2 reduction to C-1-C-3 products using Cu-based electrocatalytic materials and some expectations for the new mechanistic insights on the Cu electrodes for the electroreduction of CO2 to C-3 and C-4 products. The effective roles of electrocatalytic supports in achieving better activity and selectivity of the Cu-based electrocatalysts for the CO2RR to a practical significance were also suggested. To conclude this, several commonly overlooked factors were suggested as the challenges and prospects for fostering more improvements on the intrinsic electrocatalytic properties of the Cu-based materials. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.