A high-performance oxygen evolution catalyst in neutral-pH for sunlight-driven CO2 reduction

Li Qin Zhou; Chen Ling; Hui Zhou; Xiang Wang; Joseph Liao; Gunugunuri K Reddy; Liangzi Deng; Torin C Peck; Ruigang Zhang; M Stanley Whittingham; Chongmin Wang; Ching-Wu Chu; Yan Yao; Hongfei Jia

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12009-8

A high-performance oxygen evolution catalyst in neutral-pH for sunlight-driven CO₂ reduction

Nat Commun. 2019 Sep 9;10(1):4081. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-12009-8.

Authors

Li Qin Zhou¹, Chen Ling², Hui Zhou³, Xiang Wang⁴, Joseph Liao⁵, Gunugunuri K Reddy¹, Liangzi Deng⁶, Torin C Peck¹, Ruigang Zhang¹, M Stanley Whittingham³, Chongmin Wang⁷, Ching-Wu Chu^{6

8}, Yan Yao⁹, Hongfei Jia¹

Affiliations

¹ Toyota Research Institute of North America, Ann Arbor, MI, 48105, USA.
² Toyota Research Institute of North America, Ann Arbor, MI, 48105, USA. chen.ling@toyota.com.
³ Chemistry and Materials, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, 13902, USA.
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15261, USA.
⁵ Enli Technology Co. Ltd., Kaohsiung City, 82151, Taiwan.
⁶ Texas Center for Superconductivity and Department of Physics, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA.
⁷ Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, 99352, USA.
⁸ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH), University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA.

Abstract

The efficiency of sunlight-driven reduction of carbon dioxide (CO₂), a process mimicking the photosynthesis in nature that integrates the light harvester and electrolysis cell to convert CO₂ into valuable chemicals, is greatly limited by the sluggish kinetics of oxygen evolution in pH-neutral conditions. Current non-noble metal oxide catalysts developed to drive oxygen evolution in alkaline solution have poor performance in neutral solutions. Here we report a highly active and stable oxygen evolution catalyst in neutral pH, Brownmillerite Sr₂GaCoO₅, with the specific activity about one order of magnitude higher than that of widely used iridium oxide catalyst. Using Sr₂GaCoO₅ to catalyze oxygen evolution, the integrated CO₂ reduction achieves the average solar-to-CO efficiency of 13.9% with no appreciable performance degradation in 19 h of operation. Our results not only set a record for the efficiency in sunlight-driven CO₂ reduction, but open new opportunities towards the realization of practical CO₂ reduction systems.