Enhanced electroreduction of CO2 to C2+ fuels by the synergetic effect of polyaniline/CuO nanosheets hybrids

Electrochemically converting CO2 to value-added multi-carbon (C2+) fuels and chemicals is a favorable way to achieve carbon neutrality. Herein, polyaniline/CuO nanosheets (PANI/CuO NSs) hybrid electrocatalysts are developed in order to achieve superior C2+ selectivity by imparting PANI functional component to the CuO NSs. The decorated PANI nanoparticles (NPs) can effectively stabilize the *CO intermediates and increase their coverage on the active Cu sites, which facilitates the C–C coupling to form multi-carbon products. Benefiting from the synergetic effect of PANI and CuO NSs, best Faradaic efficiency (FE) for C2+ product up to 66.4% at −1.6 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) in a H-cell measurement and 60.0% at 400 mA·cm−2 in a flow cell measurement are demonstrated by PANI/CuO NSs-25 sample. More importantly, the C2+ selectivity keeps stable even in a continuous measurement time period of 92 h in H-cell measurement. The present study may provide more insights for designing efficient hybrid materials toward superior C2+ production from electrocatalytic CO2 reduction.