Operando XAS study of Cu-In nanoparticles as catalysts for electrochemical CO2 reduction

Monitoring changes in catalyst composition and structure during operation is of the utmost importance to derive unambiguous structure/function relationships, and to guide the design of better catalysts. Our aim is to follow and elucidate changes of oxidation states, structure and coordination environments in Cu-In electrocatalysts during the CO2 reduction reaction by operando XAS. Cu-In materials have been recently shown to exhibit enhanced catalytic performance. We have recently established a synthetic framework which allows the tuning of the morphology of Cu-In nanoparticles, serving as a perfect tool to elucidate structure/property relationships reliably. Lab-based electrochemical tests have established that the product distribution varies greatly as a function of these morphologies and differs from monometallic Cu and In catalysts of the same size, and synchrotron-based XAS studies are needed to further rationalise the sources of the performance variation.