Electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction to chemical fuels driven by renewable energy provides a highly promising route to fabricate the circular economy. However, the high overpotential and competitive side reactions severely hinder the industrial application of this process. Here we prepare the atomically dispersed Mn catalyst with high surface density of Mn-N sites via carbon protection and pyrolysis strategies, which exhibits a maximum of 90 % CO faradaic efficiency and the low overpotential of 80 mV to produce CO. The enhanced catalytic performance is mainly attributed to the high surface density of Mn-N₄ sites, abundant defects, and high electrochemical active surface area. This work provides the possibility to improve the CO₂ electroreduction performance of inert catalysts through surface structure design.

中文翻译：

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原子分散的 Mn 催化剂中 Mn-N 位点的高表面密度，用于有效的 CO2 电还原


由可再生能源驱动的电催化 CO₂ 还原为化学燃料为构建循环经济提供了一条非常有前途的途径。然而，高过电位和竞争性副反应严重阻碍了该工艺的工业应用。在这里，我们通过碳保护和热解策略制备了具有高 Mn-N 位点表面密度的原子分散 Mn 催化剂，其表现出最高 90% 的 CO 法拉第效率和 80 mV 的低过电位来产生 CO。增强的催化性能主要归因于 Mn-N₄ 位点的高表面密度、丰富的缺陷和高电化学活性表面积。这项工作为通过表面结构设计提高惰性催化剂的 CO₂ 电还原性能提供了可能。