Porous Copper Nanocavities for Selective Co2 Reduction to Multicarbon Products Via Intermediates Confinement

Constructing nanoporous or nanocavity structure provides an electrocatalytic platform for enhancing active surface area and local mass density. The construction and preservation of specific geometry from the harsh electrochemical environments are critical for improving the catalytic performance of CO2 reduction (CO2R), which is desirable but challenging. In this paper, we combine both the porous and the cavity features into one structure, porous copper nanocavity, which is successfully derived from pristine porous Cu2O template. We compare the catalytic CO2R performance of the porous copper nanocavities with the bulky catalysts derived from commercial Cu2O, and the former one shows a superior selectivity to multicarbon products. Operando Raman spectra suggests that high coverage of *CO and intermediates confinement in porous copper nanocavities are the origin for the improved performance of CO2R. These results may pave a way for a rational geometry design of selective catalysts for CO2R