Nobel Metal Based High Entropy Alloy for Conversion of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) to Hydrocarbon

Conversion of carbon-di-oxide into selective hydrocarbon using stable catalyst remains a holy-grail in catalysis community. The high overpotential, stability, and selectivity in use of a single metal-based catalyst still remain a challenge. In current work, instead of using pure noble metals (Ag, Au, and Pt) as the catalyst, a novel nanocrystalline high entropy alloy (HEA: AuAgPtPdCu) has been used for conversion of CO₂ into gaseous hydrocarbons. Utilizing an approach of multi-metallic HEA, a Faradaic efficiency of about 100% towards gaseous products is obtained. The reason behind the superior catalytic activity of high entropy alloy (HEA) was established through first-principles based density functional theory (DFT) by comparing it with pristine Cu (111) surface. This is attributed to the reversal in adsorption trends for two out of the total eight intermediates - ^*OCH₃ and ^*O on Cu(111) and HEA surfaces.