J. Mater. Sci. Technol. ›› 2026, Vol. 250: 17-24.DOI: 10.1016/j.jmst.2025.04.087

• Research article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Copper anchored MXene regulated metal-oxide interfaces for the CO2 electrocatalytic conversion

Linhao Liua,b, Hailong Lia,*, Tianbin Yuana,b, Jianwen Zhanga, Kangning Xuea,b, Juan Houa,*, Guozhong Caoc,*   

  1. aXinjiang Production & Construction Corps Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Storage Materials and Technologies/College of Sciences, Shihezi University, Shihezi 832003, China;
    bSchool of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Key Laboratory for Green Process of Chemical Engineering of Xinjiang Bingtuan, Shihezi University, Shihezi 832003, China;
    cDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195, USA
  • Received:2025-04-07 Revised:2025-05-25 Accepted:2025-05-27 Published:2026-04-10 Online:2025-07-13
  • Contact: *E-mail addresses: well09131015@shzu.edu.cn (H. Li), hjuan05@shzu.edu.cn (J. Hou), gzcao@uw.edu (G. Cao).

Abstract: Electrocatalytic conversion of CO2 into CO is a promising strategy for mitigating the energy crisis, but simultaneously achieving high selectivity and activity of electrocatalysts remains challenging. Herein, we construct a catalyst with a special interface structure featuring abundant unsaturated coordination surface sites that boost CO2 conversion. The Cu-Ti3C2Tx/ZnO catalyst with interface coupling structure achieved high CO Faraday efficiency (FECO=90.71 % in H-Cell, FECO=98.4 % in Flow Cell), and maintained high FECO (greater than 85.2 %) and stable current density for 20 h under high current conditions (200 mA/cm2), demonstrating excellent selectivity and stability for the conversion of CO2 to CO. In situ infrared and DFT (density functional theory) calculations reveal that this remarkable performance is attributed to the special interface coupling of Cu-Ti3C2Tx/ZnO, which can improve the selectivity of the *COOH intermediates (formation energy: 0.45→0.33 eV) and suppress hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) by increasing electronic donation of Cu and upward shift of the d-band center relative to the Fermi level within ZnO regulated Cu-Ti3C2Tx interface. This study successfully demonstrated a practical strategy for MXene-based interface interaction with metal oxide regulation and provided new insights for the design and preparation of high-performance electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction.

Key words: Interface coupling, eCO2RR, MXene, CO