Abstract
The electrochemical CO reduction reaction (CORR) has attracted a surge of research interest in sustainably producing high-value multi-carbon products, such as acetate. Nevertheless, most current CORR catalysts exhibit low acetate current densities, poor longevity and limited acetate selectivity. Here we present a Zeolite Socony Mobil-confined Cu single-atom cluster (CuZSM SACL) for CORR, in which Cu SAs are chemically anchored via robust Cu–O–Si bonds while Cu CLs are physically trapped within the porous framework of zeolite cavities. Consequently, the CuZSM SACL-containing membrane electrode assembly enables a remarkable CO-to-acetate current density of 1.8 A cm−2 with a high acetate Faraday efficiency of 71 ± 3%. More importantly, we demonstrate that the Cu-based membrane electrode assembly can stably catalyse CO to acetate at an industrial current density of 1 A cm−2 at 2.7 V (Faraday efficiency 61 ± 5%) beyond 1,000 h at atmospheric pressure. This milestone sheds light on high-performing Cu-type catalysts for practical CORR applications.
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Data availability
All data supporting the findings of this study are available in the provided Source data and the Supplementary Information. Additional data are also available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The computational codes used in this work are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFA1504500 and 2024YFA1509500 to X.H.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22025108, U21A20327 and 22121001 to X.H.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22475181 to N.C.), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (20720240059 to N.C.), the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF (GZB20240393 to C.Z.), the start-up funding from Xiamen University National Key Research, the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFB2500303 to D.S.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22075317, U21A20328, 22105220 and 52101277 to D.S.), the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) (XDB33030200 to D.S.) and the Project Funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M703457 to X.L.). We thank beamline BL14W1 (Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility) for providing the beam time. We acknowledge support from the Max Planck-POSTECH-Hsinchu Center for Complex Phase Materials.
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X.H. and N.C. conceived and supervised the research. Y.W., C.Z. and J.L. designed and conducted the experiments. N.C., Y.W., C.Z. and J.L. wrote the draft. N.C. and X.H. edited the paper. J.H. conducted the DFT calculations. D.S., X.L. and C.Z. performed the AC-HAADF-STEM measurements. C.Z., S.L., J.L., T.Y. and W.L. helped for the materials synthesis. C.Z., C.-W.K., Y.-C.H., T.-S.C. and Z.H. performed the XAS analysis. X.Z. performed in situ ATR-FTIR testing. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.
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Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1–37 and Tables 1–13.
Supplementary Data 1
1H NMR spectrum of the electrolyte to analyse liquid products after CORR testing in a flow cell in 1 M KOH.
Supplementary Data 2
1H NMR spectrum of the electrolyte to analyse the liquid products after CORR in MEA.
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Wen, Y., Zhan, C., Liu, J. et al. Zeolite-confined Cu single-atom clusters stably catalyse CO to acetate at 1 A cm−2 beyond 1,000 h. Nat. Nanotechnol. 20, 656–663 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-01892-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-01892-6
