Designing Atomically Dispersed Au on Tensile-Strained Pd for Efficient CO₂ Electroreduction to Formate

Pd is one of the most effective catalysts for the electrochemical reduction of CO₂ to formate, a valuable liquid product, at low overpotential. However, the intrinsically high CO affinity of Pd makes the surface vulnerable to CO poisoning, resulting in rapid catalyst deactivation during CO₂ electroreduction. Herein, we utilize the interaction between metals and metal-organic frameworks to synthesize atomically dispersed Au on tensile-strained Pd nanoparticles showing significantly improved formate production activity, selectivity, and stability with high CO tolerance. We found that the tensile strain stabilizes all reaction intermediates on the Pd surface, whereas the atomically dispersed Au selectively destabilizes CO* without affecting other adsorbates. As a result, the conventional COOH* versus CO* scaling relation is broken, and our catalyst exhibits 26- and 31-fold enhancement in partial current density and mass activity toward electrocatalytic formate production with over 99% faradaic efficiency, compared to Pd/C at -0.25 V versus RHE.