Electrochemical reduction of CO₂ into useful fuels, when powered by renewable energy, is an ideal process for replacing fossil feedstocks and simultaneously decreasing CO₂ emission. Developing inexpensive electrocatalysts for CO₂ reduction to CO with high activity and selectivity is an important part of CO₂ conversion. Zn as a low-cost metal is identified to be a promising electrocatalyst for CO₂ conversion. Here, we report a Zn electrode composed of multilayered Zn nanosheets (MZnNSs) with high density of edge sites. The MZnNSs catalyst exhibited a maximal CO Faradaic efficiency about 86% at −1.13 V vs RHE, which is almost 9 times higher than that of bulk Zn foil. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations suggest that the improvement of the activity and selectivity of MZnNSs for CO₂ reduction is attributed to its high density of edge sites.

当使用可再生能源驱动时，将CO ₂电化学还原成有用的燃料，是替代化石原料并同时减少CO ₂排放的理想方法。开发廉价的具有高活性和选择性的用于将CO ₂还原为CO的电催化剂是CO ₂转化的重要组成部分。锌被认为是低成本的金属，有望成为CO ₂的有希望的电催化剂转换。在这里，我们报告的锌电极由具有高边缘位置密度的多层锌纳米片（MZnNSs）组成。MZnNSs催化剂在-1.13 V时相对于RHE表现出最大的CO法拉第效率，约为RHE的约86％，比散装锌箔的法拉第效率高将近9倍。密度泛函理论（DFT）计算表明，MZnNSs降低CO ₂的活性和选择性的提高归因于其边缘位点的高密度。