Facial synthesis of high-performance Ni doped-tin oxide mesoporous for CO2 electroreduction to formate

Abstract

Reducing CO2 by electrochemical means is one of the most promising methods of mitigating the excessive emission of CO2. Here, we report a simple and low-cost one-pot procedure to fabricate nickel-doped SnO2 (Ni(x)/meso-SnO2) using of NaCl-based solution approach for highly efficient CO2 electrochemical reduction. When compared to pure meso-SnO2, Ni(b)/meso-SnO2 (with 4.8 wt% Ni) performs superior with a greater partial current density (-116.30 mA cm−2), higher Faradiac efficiency (88.50%) at −0.8 VRHE for formic acid production. The mesoporous structures may have an enormous surface area with an abundance of active sites. Furthermore, Ni doping modifies the electron configuration of SnO2 and creates a high number of oxygen vacancies. The rapid transfer of electrons assisted in the production of CO2•− intermediate, while the O-vacancy (OV) contributed to the stabilization of the CO2•− intermediate and the inhibition of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The results showed that the NaCl-template-assisted method might provide a novel approach for developing metal oxide-based catalysts, particularly for high-efficiency CO2 reduction.

Keywords

• Carbon dioxide reduction
• SnO2 catalysts
• Ni doping
• Template-assisted Synthesis
• HCOOH production