Researchers at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science have shown that removing polymer binders from CO2 electrolysis electrodes can sharply improve performance. Their self-supported silver and copper nanowire arrays convert CO2 to carbon monoxide and n-propanol with reported Faradaic efficiencies of 97.28% and 17.47% respectively, and held stable for 50 hours in testing. The electrode architecture also delivered 77.7 mA/cm2 partial current density for n-propanol in a flow cell setup. Unlike conventional slurry-coated electrodes that use Nafion or PTFE binders, the nanowires grow directly on a conductive scaffold. That removes a common degradation path and improves mass transport, which matters as CO2 electrolysis moves toward industrial scale. The main open question is whether the template synthesis can be scaled cheaply enough to compete with standard electrode manufacturing.
