Researchers at Central South University have developed a corn-shaped nanowire catalyst that converts captured CO2 into ethylene, a key plastic feedstock, with a Faradaic efficiency of 38.8%. The AgPd@Cu core-shell structure traps CO intermediates on a rough copper surface, enabling carbon-carbon coupling that single-metal catalysts cannot achieve. The catalyst maintained stable performance over 12 hours of continuous operation, suggesting potential for industrial use in recycling captured carbon into valuable chemicals instead of emitting it. This approach addresses a long-standing bottleneck in CO2 electroreduction: the slow kinetics of forming multi-carbon products. By engineering nanoscale reaction environments, the team showed that catalyst architecture matters as much as composition. The work was published in Nano Research and supported by Chinese national science foundations. For carbon markets and low-carbon industry, this type of technology could create economic value from captured CO2, improving the business case for carbon capture and utilization projects.
