Confinement Effect and 3D Design Endow Unsaturated Single Ni Atoms with Ultrahigh Stability and Selectivity toward CO₂ Electroreduction

Developing single-atomic catalysts with superior selectivity and outstanding stability for CO₂ electroreduction is desperately required but still challenging. Herein, confinement strategy and three-dimensional (3D) nanoporous structure design strategy are combined to construct unsaturated single Ni sites (Ni-N₃) stabilized by pyridinic N-rich interconnected carbon nanosheets. The confinement agent chitosan and its strong interaction with g-C₃N₄ nanosheet are effective for dispersing Ni and restraining their agglomeration during pyrolysis, resulting in ultrastable Ni single-atom catalyst. Due to the confinement effect and structure advantage, such designed catalyst exhibits a nearly 100% selectivity and remarkable stability for CO₂ electroreduction to CO, exceeding most reported state-of-the-art catalysts. Specifically, the CO Faradaic efficiency (FE_CO) maintains above 90% over a broad potential range (-0.55 to -0.95 V vs. RHE) and reaches a maximum value of 99.6% at a relatively low potential of -0.67 V. More importantly, the FE_CO is kept above 95% within a long-term 100 h electrolyzing. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations explain the high selectivity for CO generation is due to the high energy barrier required for hydrogen evolution on the unsaturated Ni-N₃. This work provides a new designing strategy for the construction of ultrastable and highly selective single-atom catalysts for efficient CO₂ conversion.