Boosting CO2 Electroreduction on N,P‐Co‐doped Carbon Aerogels

Abstract Electroreduction of CO 2 to CO powered by renewable electricity is a possible alternative to synthesizing CO from fossil fuel. However, it is very hard to achieve high current density at high faradaic efficiency (FE). Here, the first use of N,P‐co‐doped carbon aerogels (NPCA) to boost CO 2 reduction to CO is presented. The FE of CO could reach 99.1 % with a partial current density of −143.6 mA cm −2 , which is one of the highest current densities to date. NPCA has higher electrochemical active area and overall electronic conductivity than that of N‐ or P‐doped carbon aerogels, which favors electron transfer from CO 2 to its radical anion or other key intermediates. By control experiments and theoretical calculations, it is found that the pyridinic N was very active for CO 2 reduction to CO, and co‐doping of P with N hinder the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) significantly, and thus the both current density and FE are very high.