Efficient syngas production via CO2 reforming and electroreduction reactions through catalyst design

• DRM and CRR are valuable for carbon neutralization and syngas production. • Catalyst design strategies are crucial to improve CO 2 utilization efficiency. • Structured catalysts design are effective in decreasing carbon deposition for DRM. • Electronic structure, size, morphology, and porosity tuning are efficient for CRR. • Mechanism understanding using in situ characterization tools is important. CO 2 conversion to produce syngas via reforming of CH 4 and electrochemical reduction reaction is attractive to achieve carbon neutralization, mitigate CO 2 related environmental problems, and provide important intermediate for value-added chemicals production. Tremendous progress has been made in the catalyst development for these two reactions, which is critical to improve the utilization efficiency of the inert CO 2 . Whereas, catalyst design strategies for these two reactions have not been systematically discussed. Therefore, here, design strategies such as increasing sintering resistance, enhancing redox property, basicity, and porosity etc. for structured catalysts including core/yolk shell, perovskite and spinel catalyst for DRM are analysed. In addition, CRR catalyst design measures from both atomic-, molecular- and meso -scale for instance tuning of electronic structure, size, morphology, and porosity to increase the syngas selectivity are compared. Finally, challenges and future work of these two reactions are proposed. Some of the challenges and solutions include (1) facile large scale synthesis strategies are highly desired to design multifunctional catalysts with low mass transfer resistance in addition to silica-based and noble-metal based catalysts; (2) mechanism illustration of confinement effect, synergistic effect, and intermediate species are crucial and feasible aided with various in situ characterization techniques; (3) more stringent reaction conditions are required to boost their industrial process of these two reactions. This review is timely and useful to boost the advancement of these two reactions and promote carbon neutralization.