At present, global warming, CO₂ emissions, and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are central topics in politics and scientific debate. Strategies such as CO₂ capture and storage have been applied, aiming at decelerating and even at discontinuing the accumulation of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Further transformation of the captured CO₂ into valuable fuels and chemicals is of crucial importance for a sustainable carbon cycle and long-term energy storage. Among many technologies, electrochemical conversion is considered particularly attractive since it can be realized at mild conditions using electricity generated from renewable sources as energy input. This technology, although it is very promising, confronts many challenges due to the high energy barriers, slow kinetics, and complex pathways of the CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR). Therefore, rationally designed electrocatalysts are essential to boost the reaction under a specific pathway. Metal elements such as copper (Cu), tin (Sn), zinc (Zn), silver (Ag), gold (Au), indium (In), and bismuth (Bi) have received the greatest attention as catalytic materials for the CO₂RR. Various forms of these metals have been explored, such as single metal or monometallic oxide, bimetal or bimetallic oxide, metal halide, plain electrode, nanostructured architecture, and so on. Carbon-supported metal/metal oxides are also reported in the literature. Until now, the research in the CO₂RR community highlights the importance of the rational design of nanostructured multi-metallic materials in order to obtain desired characteristics such as high conductivity, high selectivity, good activity, satisfactory stability, low price, easy scaling up, and so on. Meanwhile, other crystalline materials such as metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and their subclass zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) are also gaining much attention.

Dr. Juqin Zeng
Dr. Fabrizio Pirri
Dr. Adriano Sacco
Dr. Wenbo Ju
Prof. Dr. Simelys Hernández
Guest Editors

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• carbon dioxide reduction reaction
• high-value chemicals and fuels
• electrocatalysts
• metal-based crystals
• metal organic framework
• electrical conductivity
• selectivity
• stability
• activity
• tailorability