Highly Efficient and Selective Cu/MnO_x Catalysts for Carbon Dioxide Reduction

Catalytic reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) to chemical and energy feedstocks is of great importance to both environmental improvement and energy regeneration. Herein, a Cu decorated MnOx nanowirebased heterogeneous catalyst was rationally designed via a facile hydrothermal method toward the optimization of their performance in CO2 reduction. The synthesized Cu/MnOx combines well-dispersed Cu nanoparticles on MnOx nanowires, exhibiting a nearly complete conversion efficiency and 100% selectivity toward reverse water gas shift to produce CO under mild reaction conditions (425 °C). It is found that Cu/MnOx with Cu/Mn molar ratio of 1:1 with a strong interaction between metal and support possessed rich surface oxygen vacancies and lattice strain, resulting in the optimal activity with CO2 conversion rate of 13.8 μmol gcat–1 s–1 and TOF of 4.32 mol molcat–1 h–1. The strategy to optimize the metal–support interaction in this work has opened a new avenue for the design of advanced noble-metal-free catalysts for more heterogeneous catalytic applications.