High Facets on Nanowrinkled Cu via Chemical Vapor Deposition Graphene Growth for Efficient CO2 Reduction into Ethanol

Achieving high electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into valuable fuels and chemicals is one of the most promising directions to address environmental and energy challenges. Although several single-crystal based studies and simulation results have reported that rich in steps on Cu (100) surfaces are favorable to convert toward C 2 alcohol products, most studies are still stuck in low-index (100) facets or surface defect-derived low density of step-sites. In the present work, we report the high production of ethanol by synthesizing a wrinkled Cu catalyst with high facets via a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene growth process. Under our approach, we used graphene as a guiding material to produce wrinkled Cu film for use as an electrocatalyst. The graphene-grown Cu films are not only mass-producible but composed of a high density of step-sites with high-facet atomic a…