Scalable strategy to fabricate single Cu atoms coordinated carbons for efficient electroreduction of CO₂ to CO

Developing efficient, selective, and stable single-atom electrocatalysts for CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) is attractive but still remains a challenging, especially for scalable production with low-cost. Among the non-precious metal single-atom electrocatalysts, Cu single-atom electrocatalysts are rarely explored for the efficient CO₂-to-CO conversion. Herein, we reported a facile and scalable strategy to prepare the Cu single-atom catalyst (Cu SAs/NC) with exceptional CO production performances. Atomically dispersed Cu–N₄ moieties are unambiguously verified by HAADF-STEM and XANES measurements. The as-prepared Cu SAs/NC catalyst delivers a high CO faradaic efficiency of 92% at −0.7 V_RHE as well as the excellent durability over 30 h successive electrolysis. It should be noted that this is one of the rare examples of efficient CO production on Cu single-atom electrocatalyst. Besides, the 20-g + samples can be readily fabricated in one batch and exhibit the almost identical CO₂RR performances. Furthermore, the combined experimental and theoretical calculation results identify the genuine active Cu–N₄ sites are responsible for the high selectivity and efficiency of CO production. This work provides a novel strategy for scalable single-atom electrocatalysts in stable quality and offers new insights into the efficient CO₂-to-CO conversion on Cu single-atom electrocatalyst.