Atomic-scale design of electrocatalysts for renewable energy conversion and storage in energy-rich

Rapidly decarbonizing our electricity, transport and industrial sectors requires new clean fuels, green synthesis routes and scalable energy storage options. As electricity generation from renewables becomes cheaper, large-scale synthesis of fuels and chemicals via electrocatalysis of CO2 and water is particularly attractive.
Copper based catalysts have emerged as interesting candidates due to copper's natural abundance and ability to yield C2+products such as ethylene, ethanol and others. However, tailoring the catalyst selectivity towards one specific product remains a challenge and thus, often only H2, CO and other C1 products are observed.
The aim of this project is to understand how yield and selectivity in the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) on copper electrodes (metallic copper and its oxides) can be tailored towards a single product. The approach will be to alter the electrode surface composition using atomic layer deposition (ALD) and understand the function of the ALD-modified surface in the catalytic reaction. ALD is a thin film deposition technique able to control material growth down to a monolayer or even thinner on flat substrates as well as within high aspect ratio nanostructures. As such, active sites can be engineered with atomic precision and their electrocatalytic performance can be studied on flat model systems as well as in high surface area electrode architectures.