Hydrogenation of CO₂ into fuels and useful chemicals could help to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Although great progress has been made over the past decades to improve the activity of catalysts for CO₂ hydrogenation, more efficient catalysts, especially those based on non-noble metals, are desired. Here we incorporate N atoms into Co nanosheets to boost the catalytic activity toward CO₂ hydrogenation. For the hydrogenation of CO₂, Co₄N nanosheets exhibited a turnover frequency of 25.6 h⁻¹ in a slurry reactor under 32 bar pressure at 150 °C, which was 64 times that of Co nanosheets. The activation energy for Co₄N nanosheets was 43.3 kJ mol⁻¹, less than half of that for Co nanosheets. Mechanistic studies revealed that Co₄N nanosheets were reconstructed into Co₄NH _x , wherein the amido-hydrogen atoms directly interacted with the CO₂ to form HCOO* intermediates. In addition, the adsorbed H₂O* activated amido-hydrogen atoms via the interaction of hydrogen bonds.

将CO ₂加氢为燃料和有用的化学物质可以帮助减少对化石燃料的依赖。尽管在过去的几十年中已经在改善用于CO ₂加氢的催化剂的活性方面取得了很大的进步，但是仍需要更有效的催化剂，尤其是那些基于非贵金属的催化剂。在这里，我们将N原子结合到Co纳米片中，以增强对CO ₂氢化的催化活性。对于CO ₂的氢化，在淤浆反应器中在150℃的32巴压力下，Co ₄ N纳米片表现出25.6h ^-1的周转频率，这是Co纳米片的64倍。Co ₄ N纳米片的活化能为43.3 kJ mol ^-1，不到钴纳米片的一半。机理研究表明，Co ₄ N纳米片被重建为Co ₄ NH _x，其中酰胺氢原子直接与CO ₂相互作用形成HCOO *中间体。此外，被吸附的H ₂ O *通过氢键的相互作用活化了酰胺氢原子。