A Computational-Experimental Investigation of the Mechanisms Responsible for the Enhanced CO2 Electrochemical Reduction of Dendritic Sn1Pb3 Alloy
Authors: Fan Mengyang , Eslamibidgoli Mohammad J. , Garbarino Sebastien , Tavares Ana C , Eikerling Michael Hermann , Guay Daniel 
Published: May 2020

The electrochemical conversion of CO2 into useful chemicals and fuels provides a means to recycle CO2 and achieve carbon balance.[1, 2] There are several value-added products that can be obtained from the electroreduction of CO2. Formic acid/formate is one of the useful products which has a strong market.[3] Formic acid/formate is widely used in several industrial sectors including pharmaceutical synthesis, pulp and paper production, textile finishing, as additive in animal feeds and as deicing agent.[4] In addition, formic acid/formate has been identified as a potentially hydrogen carrier and as a fuel for direct formate fuel cells (DFFC).[5, 6]

Years of research have shown that various metals including Pb, Hg, Bi, and Sn produce HCOOH as a major product (high Faradic efficiency) during the electroreduction of CO2.[7-9] However, large onset potentials and high overpotentials should be applied when large current densities are achieved. Several investigations revealed that increasing the electrochemical active surface area of catalysts is effective to decrease the overpotenial.[10-12] However, Reducing the onset potential for CO2 electroreduction calls for more subtle manipulation of the catalyst composition since it is determined by the adsorption energies of reaction intermediates. Alloying with appropriate elements can affect the CO2 reduction onset potential.

In this study, dendritic Sn-Pb alloy and Pb is investigated for CO2 electroreduction. The performances of these materials for the CO2 electroreduction will be evaluated. The DFT calculation results will be presented to explain the better performances of dendritic Sn1Pb3 alloy.

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