Electroreduction of
CO
2 to formic acid has attracted extensive attention, because it is
a promising strategy to re-utilize CO
2 and reduce greenhouse gas
emissions that may favor the mitigation of energy and environment issues. Although
great efforts have been made to tune the structure and composition of catalysts
aiming to improve CO
2 conversion efficiency, seldom studies have
been focused on the support regulation. In this work, ordered, porous TiO
2 nanotube arrays have been used as model support to study the impact of pore structure
for CO
2 electrochemical reduction. It has been revealed that Pd
supported on TiO
2 nanotube arrays substrate exhibits enhanced
performance towards CO
2 reduction, showing a higher formate Faradaic
efficiency of 20% over than Pd supported on TiO
2 film substrate.
This study will shed new light on the design and synthesis of efficient
catalysts by tuning the morphology of support for CO
2 conversion.