Phosphorus Induced Electron Localization of Single Iron Sites for Boosted CO2 Electroreduction Reaction

Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into chemicals and fuels has recently attracted much interest, but normally suffers from a high overpotential and low selectivity. In this work, single P atoms were introduced into a N-doped carbon supported single Fe atom catalyst (Fe- SAC /NPC) mainly in the form of P-C bonds for CO 2 electroreduction to CO in an aqueous solution. This catalyst exhibited a CO Faradaic efficiency of ~97% at a low overpotential of 320 mV, and a Tafel slope of only 59 mV dec -1 , comparable to state-of-the-art gold catalysts. Experimental analysis combined with DFT calculations suggested that single P atom in high coordination shells (n ≥ 3), in particular the third coordination shell of Fe center enhanced the electronic localization of Fe, which improved the stabilization of the key *COOH intermediate on Fe, leading to superior CO 2 electrochemical reduction performance at low overpotentials.