Pd-doped In2O3 for CO2 Electroreduction to Ethanol through CO Binding Regulation

Renewable energy driven electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction (CO2RR) to alcohols provides an effective pathway for achieving carbon neutrality and sustainable development. However, it is challenging to convert CO2 into ethanol due to the sluggish C-C coupling and complex 12 electron/proton transferred process, which has been achieved mainly on Cu catalysts but with poor selectivity. Herein, In2O3 catalysts were doped with small amount of Pd and exhibited high activity for CO2RR to ethanol with a high Faradaic efficiency (50.7 %) at low overpotential. The introduction of Pd promotes the transformation of reaction products from formic acid to ethanol by modulating the binding strength of *CO intermediates. The in-situ ATR-SEIRAS and DFT calculations proved that the formation of Pd-O-In could modulate the binding strength of *CO and enhanced its coverage, thus facilitating C-C coupling step towards ethanol. This study may provide a new strategy to the generation of high value-added products from CO2 over Non-Cu-based catalysts.