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PhD: Xu Han

Director: Prof. Jordi Arbiol, Advanced Electron Nanoscopy Group Leader at ICN2 

Abstract: The excessive combustion of fossil fuels results in the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), which triggers increasing environmental problems, such as global warming, rising sea levels, extreme weather, and species extinction. Conversion of CO2 into other value products plays a vital role to eliminate anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. Thereinto, electrochemical conversion of CO2 powered by renewable energy to useful chemicals is considered as an elegant solution to achieve the carbon cycle.

In this dissertation we focused on CO2-to-CO conversion. Since CO is one of the most promising target products when it is evaluated between the marking prices and the cost of electricity. Besides, it is the simplest product only going through two electrons and two protons transform which is easier to explore and analyse optimized strategies. We will optimize different key steps of CO2-to-CO conversion by taking different strategies. The goal of the present dissertation is to improve certain steps on certain catalysts to realize improved activity and selectivity of the CO2-to-CO conversion. The main idea is changing the local environment of active sites to make them more favourable for conversion. The whole work includes three parts, focusing on improving adsorption of CO2, the transformation of CO2 and desorption of CO2 respectively to optimize activity and selectivity on catalysts.