Atomic-level-designed copper atoms on hierarchically porous gold architectures for high-efficiency electrochemical CO2 reduction

Electrochemical CO2 reduction is a promising technology for solving the emission problems and producing value-added products. Here, we report hierarchically porous Cu1Au single-atom alloy (SAA) as an efficient electrocatalyst reduction. Benefiting from architectures with abundant vacancies well three-dimensional accessible active sites, as-prepared nanoporous SAA catalyst shows remarkable performance nearly 100% CO Faraday efficiency in wide potential range (?0.4 to ?0.9 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode. The in-situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy studies density functional theory calculations reveal that Cu-Au interface sites serve intrinsic centers, which can facilitate activated adsorption of stabilize *COOH intermediate.