Photoelectrochemical
(PEC) reduction of CO2 is a potential
way to simultaneously address environmental problems and reduce the
energy crisis. However, traditional conversion of CO2 in
aqueous solution has serious drawbacks, such as low solubility, slow
diffusion, and complicated existing form of CO2 in water,
as well as the competitive H2 evolution from reduction
of H2O, leading to unsatisfactory conversion efficiency
and poor product selectivity. To overcome these problems, in this
work, gas CO2 has been directly introduced to a flow cell,
in which a membrane cathode assembly with Ag nanocube electrocatalysts
is used. It is surprising to find that with this PEC reduction strategy,
the product selectivity of CO can be substantially enhanced with the
suppression of competitive H2 evolution. The control experiments
and theoretical calculations suggest that the facile mass transfer
of gas CO2 to the (100) plane of Ag nanocubes electrocatalysts
and the suitable photocurrent density may account for such advantages.