High‐Voltage Electrospinning‐Assisted Defect Engineering in Oxide‐Derived Cu Nanowires Enables Selective CO 2 Electroreduction Toward C 2+ Products
Peng Wu, Shengpeng Mo, Xiao Wang, Xiaoping Chen, Xinghao Bai, Yanbing Guo, Junhua Li, Jianjun ChenABSTRACT
Electrochemical CO 2 reduction toward multicarbon (C 2+ ) products remains challenging because conventional Cu catalysts lack the ability to simultaneously optimize intermediate stabilization, proton transfer, and C─C coupling kinetics. Here we report a high‐voltage electrospinning‐assisted defect engineering strategy to regulate the electronic structure of Cu catalysts for selective C 2+ electrosynthesis. Defect‐rich CuO nanowire precursors were fabricated by high‐voltage electrospinning and subsequently reconstructed into oxide‐derived Cu (OD‐Cu) nanowires enriched with abundant electronically perturbed Cu sites. The resulting OD‐Cu nanowires exhibit substantially enhanced C 2+ selectivity compared with conventional Cu catalysts. Mechanistic studies reveal that high‐voltage electrospinning‐assisted defects reorganize the reorganization of the interfacial water configuration and proton‐transfer dynamics while strengthening Cu─ * CO π‐backbonding interactions, thereby optimizing * CO stabilization and promoting hydrogen‐assisted C─C coupling. This work establishes a direct correlation between high‐voltage electrospinning‐assisted defect regulation, electronic structure modulation and multicarbon formation kinetics, providing a general strategy for designing efficient Cu catalysts for selective C 2+ electrosynthesis.