Innovations in catalysis towards efficient electrochemical reduction of CO₂ to C₁ chemicals

The electrochemical CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) is considered a promising technology for converting atmospheric CO₂ into valuable chemicals. It is a significant way to mitigate the shortage of fossil energy and store excessive renewable electricity in fuels to maintain carbon neutrality. Considering the substantially reduced cost of clean electricity, C₁ molecule unitization has emerged as a competitive strategy for room-temperature electrolysis. However, the practical implementation of CO₂RR has been hindered by low desired product selectivity, high overpotential, and undesirable hydrogen evolution reactions (HER). Consequently, it is imperative to execute a timely assessment of advanced strategies in CO₂RR, with emphasis on catalytic design strategies, understanding of structure–activity relationships, and deactivation of catalysts. In this context, it is imperative to investigate the intrinsic active sites and reaction mechanisms. This review focuses on the design of novel catalysts and their active sites via operando techniques. The combination of advanced characterization techniques and theoretical calculations provides a high-throughput way to obtain a deeper understanding of the reaction mechanism. Furthermore, optimization of the interplay between the catalyst surface and reaction intermediate disturbs the linear correlation between the adsorption energies of the intermediates, resulting in a convoluted cascade system. The appropriate strategies for CO₂RR, challenges, and future approaches are projected in this review to stimulate major innovations. Moreover, the plausible research directions are discussed for producing C₁ chemicals via electrochemical CO₂RR at room temperature.