Highly Selective Electrocatalytic Olefin Hydrogenation in Aqueous Solution

Selective hydrogenation of olefins with green water as hydrogen source at ambient conditions is still a big challenge in the field of catalysis. Herein, the electrocatalytic hydrogenation of purely aliphatic and functionalized olefins were achieved by using graphdiyne based copper oxide quantum dots (CuxO/GDY) as cathodic electrodes and water as the hydrogen source, with high activity and selectivity in aqueous solution at high current density under ambient temperature and pressure. Especially, the sp‐/sp2‐hybridized graphdiyne catalyst allows the selective hydrogenation of cis‐trans isomeric olefins. The GDY's special chemical and electronic structure result in the incomplete charge transfer between GDY and Cu atoms to optimize the adsorption/desorption of the reaction intermediates and finally resulting in high reaction selectivity and activity for hydrogenations.