Browsing by Author "Lu, S"

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    Unsaturated edge-anchored Ni single atoms on porous microwave exfoliated graphene oxide for electrochemical CO2
    (Elsevier, 2019-04) Cheng, Y; Zhao, S; Li, H; He, S; Veder, JP; Johannessen, B; Xiao, J; Lu, S; Pan, J; Chisholm, MF; Yang, SZ; Liu, C; Chen, JG; Jiang, SP
    Supported single atom catalysts (SACs), emerging as a new class of catalytic materials, have been attracting increasing interests. Here we developed a Ni SAC on microwave exfoliated graphene oxide (Ni-N-MEGO) to achieve single atom loading of ∼6.9 wt%, significantly higher than previously reported SACs. The atomically dispersed Ni atoms, stabilized by coordination with nitrogen, were found to be predominantly anchored along the edges of nanopores (< 6 nm) using a combination of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (AC-STEM). The Ni-N-MEGO exhibits an onset overpotential of 0.18 V, and a current density of 53.6 mA mg−1 at overpotential of 0.59 V for CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR), representing one of the best non-precious metal SACs reported so far in the literature. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations suggest that the electrochemical CO2-to-CO conversion occurs more readily on the edge-anchored unsaturated nitrogen coordinated Ni single atoms that lead to enhanced activity toward CO2RR. © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.