Surface Nitrogen-Injection Engineering for High Formation Rate of CO2 Reduction to Formate

In this study, we highlight that surface nitrogen-injection engineering brings a high formation rate for CO2 reduction to formate, which is high level among the reported electrocatalysts. Surface nitrogen-injection engineering can increase the amounts of active sites and optimize the electronic structure simultaneously. Taking an example of SnS2 precursors, the final-obtained surface N-enriched Sn(S) nanosheets (denoted as N-Sn(S) nanosheets) exhibit a 5-fold of current density and 2.45-fold of Faradaic efficiency than pristine SnS2 derived Sn(S) nanosheets (denoted as Sn(S) nanosheets). On account of high activity and selectivity, the formation rate of formate is 14 times than that of pristine samples and reaches up to 1358 μmol h-1 cm-2. Moreover, this strategy is proven to be general to other metal sulfides, such as CuS and In2S3. We anticipate that surface nitrogen-injection engineering offers new avenues to rational design of advanced electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction reaction.