Liangdong Fan's laboratory, School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Shenzhen University, made research progress in the direction of Reversible Solid Oxide Cells (CO₂ reduction and CO oxidation), and related research results have been published in the Green Chemistry.

Reversible Solid Oxide Cells (RSOCs) are a key part of carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies because of their high energy conversion efficiency and available utilization of green and clean energy. However, the difficulty of CO₂ reduction and CO oxidation, as well as the carbon deposition characteristics, pose a challenge to the selection of fuel electrode materials for RSOCs. The traditional Ni-YSZ ceramic electrode is prone to carbon deposition and Ni oxidation, which limits its commercial use, bringing the possibility for the development of perovskite oxide fuel electrode, but perovskite oxide has the problem of low catalytic activity. So, inspired by the high basicity, low electronegativity, and low valence characteristics of the sodium ion, the authors proposed and demonstrated the positive roles of Na doping on the CO2 reduction performance and CO oxidation of La_0.6Sr_0.4FeO_3−δ in RSOCs and published a paper named “Electronic engineering and oxygen vacancy modification of La_0.6Sr_0.4FeO_3−δ perovskite oxide by low-electronegativity sodium substitution for efficient CO₂/CO fueled reversible solid oxide cells” in Green Chemistry (IF:9.80, JCR Q1). This paper was first authored by the master student Lin Wanbin, and Associate Professor Liang Dong Fan from Shenzhen University, Associate Professor Yihang Li from Xidian University and Professor Pei-Chen Su from Nanyang Technological University are co-corresponding authors.

In this paper, Na⁺ ions were selected to replace the A-site of La_0.6Sr_0.4FeO_3-δ (NaLSF0.10). The basic physicochemical properties such as oxygen vacancy concentration, CO₂ adsorption ability and electronic structure of Fe ions at active site were investigated. The current density of 1.707 A cm^-2 and the long-term electrolytic stability of 120 hours were obtained by using the modified NaLSF0.10 material as the electrode under the condition of pure CO₂, 800^oC and 1.5 V. The optimized RSOCs system also exhibits a 1.589 A cm⁻² current density and maximum power density of 329 mW cm⁻², as well as reversible cycle stability of more than 50 hours. These results show that Na⁺ modification can promote the CO₂ reduction /CO oxidation reaction for RSOCs.

This research activity was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22378268), the Guangdong Province Basic and Applied Basic Research General Project (2024A1515012212), and the National Taipei University of Technology-Shenzhen University Joint Academic Research Project (2023011).

Paper weblink : https://doi.org/10.1039/d3gc04451c

Inside back cover: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/gc/d4gc90034k