Gun-Do Lee

Abstract Alloying of metals can be used to optimize intermediate binding during electrocatalysis but challenges remain in overcoming thermodynamic atomic miscibility in alloys. Here we report a coordination-controlled metal alloy in which copper clusters are spatially dispersed in a crystalline silver lattice to promote the electrochemical reduction of CO2 to ethanol.

RESULTS We find that mediator atoms are typically generated from an adatom or vacancy. In the first case, we observe the mediator atom created when an adatom is caught in graphene defects. On pristine graphene, the carbon adatom migrates with a barrier of 0.3 to 0.5 eV (17, 18), which, at room temperature, translates into 104 to 108 hops per second (assuming Arrhenius first-order hopping with a 1013-Hz Debye frequency attempt rate).