Professor Shao Mingfei's team has published an article in ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces: Promoting Electrochemical Hydrogenation of Oxalic Acid to Glycolic Acid by a Cation Adsorption Strategy.

Electrocatalytic hydrogenation (ECH) of oxalic acid (OX) to produce glycolic acid (GA), an important building block of biodegradable polymers as well as application in various branches of chemistry, has attracted extensive attention in the industry, while it still encounters challenges of low reaction rate and selectivity. Herein, we reported a cation adsorption strategy to realize the efficient ECH of OX to GA by adsorbing Al³⁺ ions on an anatase titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanosheet array, achieving 2-fold enhanced GA productivity (1.3 vs 0.65 mmol cm⁻² h⁻¹) with higher Faradaic efficiency (FE) (85 vs 69%) at −0.74 V vs RHE. We reveal that the Al³⁺ adatoms on TiO₂ both act as electrophilic adsorption sites to enhance the carbonyl (C=O) adsorption of OX and glyoxylic acid (intermediate) and also promote the generation of reactive hydrogen (H*) on TiO₂, thus promoting the reaction rate. This strategy is demonstrated effective for different carboxylic acids. Furthermore, we realized the coproduction of GA at the bipolar of a H-type cell by pairing ECH of OX (at cathode) and electrooxidation of ethylene glycol (at anode), demonstrating an economical manner with maximum electron economy.

Schematic of the main components of this article.

ACS Applied Materials Interfaces  DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c00292