Optimizing interfacial interaction between Cu and metal oxides boosts methanol yield in CO2 hydrogenation

Thermocatalytic conversion of redundant CO 2 to useful methanol is an attractive route to address both energy and environmental crises simultaneously. However, existing copper/oxide catalysts widely used in these thermocatalytic processes still suffer from low methanol yield under mild reaction conditions. In this work, we design inverse oxide/Cu catalysts to achieve superior thermal catalytic performance for CO 2 hydrogenation. The optimized ZnO/Cu-1.0 catalyst exhibits maximum CH 3 OH selectivity of 83.4% and space–time yield (STY) of \(170.9\;{\text{g}}_{{{\text{CH}}_{3} {\text{OH}}}} \;{\text{kg}}_{{{\text{cat}}}}^{ - 1} \;{\text{h}}^{ - 1}\) in CO 2 hydrogenation at 210 °C, nearly twofold higher STY than the previous optimal inverse ZnO/Cu catalysts ( \(89.6\;{\text{g}}_{{{\text{CH}}_{3} {\text{OH}}}} \;{\text{kg}}_{{{\text{cat}}}}^{ - 1} \;{\text{h}}^{ - 1}\) at 250 °C). Importantly, ZnO/Cu-1.0 catalyst displayed not only a satisfactory catalytic stability but also a superior CH 3 OH STY with a time-on-stream of 24 h. Such inverse configuration of catalysts will pave the way for new strategies to design high-performance thermocatalytic catalysts and promote their commercialization. Graphical abstract Typical inverse ZnO/Cu-1.0 catalysts have been demonstrated and achieved to significantly facilitate the activation of inert CO 2 molecules to produce methanol, due to its special physicochemical properties and strong ZnO–Cu interaction