Selective Production of Methanol via Bidentate Coordination of an Intermediate on the Dual-Atom Electro-Catalyst.

Authors

Imran Muhammad, Danish Khan, Tanveer Hussain, Khuram Walayat, Awais Ghani, Kemeng Ji, Shehzad Ahmed, Asif Mahmood

Published in

Small methods. Pages e70874. Jul 28, 2026. Epub Jul 28, 2026.

Abstract

Electrochemical CO₂ reduction offers a route to produce liquid fuels such as methanol; however, strong competition from hydrogen evolution and limited control over key reaction intermediates lead to low single-product selectivity and poor stability under operating conditions. Heteronuclear dual-atom catalysts (DACs) have shown great promise in this regard because two neighboring catalyst atoms can cooperatively bind and polarize oxygenated intermediates. Despite these attractive features, DACs often struggle to stabilize the right early intermediate for methanol, so CO₂ protonation defaults back to *COOH (and then *CO), which breaks methanol selectivity. Here, we utilize DAC systems stabilized on a carbon nitride (C₃N₄) framework to resolve this mechanistic bottleneck at the molecular level using density functional theory and constrained molecular dynamics simulations. A Sn-N₂/Cu-N₂ DAC embedded in a C₃N₄ framework, coupled to an explicit aqueous interface and evaluated under an applied potential, is shown to favor methanol formation through a six-electron *OCHO pathway. The neighboring Sn and Cu sites synergistically stabilize a bidentate *OCHO intermediate through Sn─O p-orbital interactions, while suppressing formation of *COOH. The results provide a clear design rule for methanol-selective CO₂RR: enforce cooperative bidentate binding that locks in *OCHO and redirects the first protonation step away from *COOH and toward methanol.

PMID:
42517297
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 28 Jul 2026.

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