Département de chimie moléculaire

The development of new energy storage technologies is central to solving the challenges facing the widespread use of renewable energies. An option is the redn. of CO2 (CO2) into C-based products which can be achieved within an electrochem. cell. Future developments of such processes depend on the availability of cheap and selective catalysts at the electrode. A unique well-characterized active electrode material can be simply prepd. via electrodeposition from a mol. Cu complex precursor. The best performances, activity (150 mV onset overpotential and 1 mA cm-2 c.d. at 540 mV overpotential), selectivity (90{%} faradaic yield) and stability for electrocatalytic redn. of CO2 into formic acid in DMF/H2O (97 : 3 vol./vol.) were obtained with the [Cu(cyclam)](ClO4)2 complex (cyclam = 1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecane) as the precursor. Remarkably the org. ligand of the Cu precursor remains part of the composite material and the electrocatalytic activity is greatly dependent on the nature of that org. component. [on SciFinder(R)]