The excessive emission of CO₂ caused by the consumption of fossil has triggered environmental issues. Electrochemical carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction reaction (CO₂RR) with water as reaction medium is a promising approach for both decreasing atmospheric CO₂ concentration and producing value-added carbon products.

Common heterogeneous catalysts are metals, particularly nanostructured noble metals such as Au, Ag and Pd, which have shown to be active for CO₂RR in aqueous solution at low overpotentials. However, the low abundance and high cost of these precious metals limit their large-scale application. It is desirable to develop highly efficient and selective heterogeneous electrocatalysts for CO₂RR based on cheap and earth-abundant metals.

Recently, ZHANG Bingxing and Prof. ZHANG Jianling from Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators reported that the Mn-based heterogeneous catalyst can be efficient and selective electrocatalyst for converting CO₂ to carbon monoxide (CO) via halogen and nitrogen dual-coordination to modulate the electronic structure of Mn atoms.

In their study, the CO faradaic efficiency (FE_CO) is up to 97% with a current density of ~10 mA cm^-2 at a low overpotential of 0.49 V, and the turnover frequency (TOF) for CO₂RR can reach 38347 h^-1 at overpotential of 0.49 V, which outperforms all the reported heterogeneous electrocatalysts under similar conditions.

The in situ synchrotron X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) for CO₂RR and theoretical simulations revealed the promoted CO₂ activation process and facilitated CO desorption process.

This study, published in Nature Communications, opens up an opportunity for improving the CO₂RR properties of metal electrocatalysts under mild conditions, particularly for the metals with intrinsically low activity.

The extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) experiment was conducted at Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility.