Structural Transition in an Ionic Liquid Controls CO2 Electrochemical Reduction
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- 作者：Natalia Garc铆a Rey ; Dana D. Dlott
- 刊名：Journal of Physical Chemistry C
- 出版年：2015
- 出版时间：September 10, 2015
- 年：2015
- 卷：119
- 期：36
- 页码：20892-20899
- 全文大小：513K
- ISSN：1932-7455
文摘
Broad-band multiplex vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy (SFG) was used to study CO2 reduction on a polycrystalline Ag electrode with a room-temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) electrolyte, 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (EMIM-BF4), with 0.3 mol % water. The Ag/RTIL/H2O system has been shown to reduce CO2 with low overpotential and, depending on water concentration, with Faradaic efficiency of nearly 100% (Rosen, B. A.; Salehi-Khojin, A.; Thorson, M. R.; Zhu, W.; Whipple, D. T.; Kenis, P. J. A.; Masel, R. I. Science 2011, 334, 643鈥?44). The adsorbed CO created by CO2 reduction was probed with infrared (IR) pulses tuned to the CO stretch. Nonresonant (NR) SFG was used to probe the double layer. SFG showed that CO binds weakly to Ag at the CO2 reduction threshold of 鈭?.33 V (vs Ag/AgCl), so CO does not poison the surface. At potentials equal to or more negative than the threshold, the curvature of the parabolic potential-dependent NR intensity significantly increased, and the Stark shift of adsorbed CO, a measure of the surface field, more than doubled. The curvature increase indicates a potential-driven structural transition in the RTIL within the double layer. This transition was a property of the RTIL itself since it occurred whether or not CO2 was present. Significantly, the RTIL transition and the increased surface field occurred precisely at the CO2 reduction threshold. Thus, we have demonstrated a close association between an electrochemically driven structural transition of the RTIL and low overpotential CO2 reduction.