Multi-microenvironment synergistically promoting CO2 electroreduction activity on porous Cu nanosheets

Adjusting the microstructure of Cu/Cu-based catalysts is a typical approach to tuning ECO 2 RR performance, while the effects among microstructure and the induced multi-microenvironment variations for ECO 2 RR performance are still not very clear. Herein, a controllable way to introduce nanoporous structures on Cu nanosheets (Cu NSs) to modulate the surface and reaction microenvironment for synergistically improving ECO 2 RR activity is proposed. Larger nanopores uniformly distributed on Cu NSs can firstly improve the surface microenvironment by enhancing hydrophobic and CO 2 -philic properties, which promote the accessibility of CO 2 and help to suppress hydrogen evolution reaction. Furthermore, this microstructure also can adjust the reaction microenvironment by attracting and aggregating OH − anions to enhance the local pH, which helps promote the C-C coupling for C 2 H 4 formation. These findings suggest that modulating microstructure can regulate multi-microenvironment including improving the accessibility of CO 2 and constructing a higher local pH near the active sites to synergistically promote ECO 2 RR activity. Lateral micron-sized Cu nanosheets with different nanopore sizes were controllably synthesized. Introducing nanoporous structures with a larger size on Cu nanosheets can regulate multiple microenvironments including enhancing hydrophobic and CO 2 -philic properties to facilitate faster CO 2 conversion and constructing a higher local pH near the active sites to synergistically promote ECO 2 RR to C 2 H 4 . • Modulating nanoporous structures on Cu nanosheets can regulate the multi-microenvironment including promoting the accessibility of CO 2 and constructing a higher local pH near the active sites to synergistically improve ECO 2 RR activity to C 2 H 4 . • A simple chemical synthesis method enables the production of stable porous Cu catalysts in gram-scale quantities for future practical application.