Metal (Sn, Bi, Pb, Cd) in-situ anchored on mesoporous hollow kapok-tubes for outstanding electrocatalytic CO2 reduction to formate

Herein, mesoporous hollow kapok-tubes (denoted as MHKTs) is first used as carbon electrocatalyst for CO 2 electroreduction that can selectively convert CO 2 to formate without doping active elements, achieving the highest Faradaic Efficiency (FE) for formate at a potential range from −1.0 to −1.1 V vs. RHE (E = −1.0 V, FE = 48%; E = −1.1 V, FE = 50%). Moreover, MHKTs is also first used as new carbon support for loading metals in CO 2 electroreduction, metals (Sn, Bi, Pb and Cd) in-situ anchored on MHKTs are all prepared via in-situ simple one-pot synthetic strategy. The four electrocatalysts Sn@MHKTs (E = −0.9 V, FE = 94%; E = −1.0 V, FE = 95%; E = −1.1 V, FE = 90%), Bi@MHKTs (E = −0.9 V, FE = 90.5%; E = −1.0 V, FE = 93%; E = −1.1 V, FE = 92%), Pb@MHKTs (E = −1.0 V, FE = 85%; E = −1.1 V, FE = 80%) and Cd@MHKTs (E = −0.9 V, FE = 71%; E = −1.0 V, FE = 74%; E = −1.1 V, FE = 70%) all exhibit high selectivity for electrocatalytic CO 2 to formate at a wide potential range with low overpotential and high current density , respectively outperforming electrocatalysts synthesized under the same conditions that use traditional MWCNTs and rGO as carbon support (Sn@MWCNTs, Bi@MWCNTs, Pb@MWCNTs, Cd@MWCNTs; Sn@rGO, Bi@rGO, Pb@rGO, Cd@rGO). These outstanding performances of low cost metal@MHKTs electrocatalysts display great potential for large-scale using in CO 2 -to-formate process.