Alcoholamine-Grafted Zinc Oxide Enhances CO2 Electroreduction at Elevated Temperatures

Electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 is an effective way to solve environmental issues. In this article, we report an inexpensive, readily available zinc oxide catalyst (TEA-ZnO) functionalized using alkanolamine, which is highly active and selective for the reduction of CO2 to generate CO at elevated temperatures. Triethanolamine-modified zinc oxide (TEA-ZnO) shows ca. 88.8% CO Faradaic efficiency at −0.84 V vs RHE. The amine groups of triethanolamine could increase the adsorption capacity of CO2, expose more CO2-specific active sites, and mitigate the high-temperature decrease of CO2 solubility, which enables TEA-ZnO to maintain high CO2 selectivity in the temperature range of 0–60 °C.