Communication—Electrochemical Reduction of CO2 and N2 into Urea at ZIF-8 Cathode

Abstract

The synthesis of urea has been usually performed in two steps under high temperature and high pressure with huge energy consumption. In this communication, we proposed a one-step electrocatalytic synthesis of urea under ambient condition using ZIF-8 as the catalyst and CO2 and N2 as the feedstocks. At an applied voltage of −0.10 V vs RHE, the strongest Raman peak of the C-N intermediate was observed, thus the highest rate of urea yield of 5.45 mmol h−1 g−1 was achieved, with a corresponding Faradaic efficiency of 22.03%.