UC Berkeley

Nanowires have emerged as an important family of one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials owing to their exceptional optical, electrical, and chemical properties. In particular, Cu nanowires (NWs) show promising applications in catalyzing the challenging electrochemical CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) to valuable chemical fuels. Despite early reports showing morphological changes of Cu NWs after CO₂RR processes, their structural evolution and the resulting exact nature of active Cu sites remain largely elusive, which calls for the development of multimodal operando time-resolved nm-scale methods. Here, we report that well-defined 1D copper nanowires, with a diameter of around 30 nm, have a metallic 5-fold twinned Cu core and around 4 nm Cu₂O shell. Operando electrochemical liquid-cell scanning transmission electron microscopy (EC-STEM) showed that as-synthesized Cu@Cu₂O NWs experienced electroreduction of surface Cu₂O to disordered (spongy) metallic Cu shell (Cu@Cu^S NWs) under CO₂RR relevant conditions. Cu@Cu^S NWs further underwent a CO-driven Cu migration leading to a complete evolution to polycrystalline metallic Cu nanograins. Operando electrochemical four-dimensional (4D) STEM in liquid, assisted by machine learning, interrogates the complex structures of Cu nanograin boundaries. Correlative operando synchrotron-based high-energy-resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy unambiguously probes the electroreduction of Cu@Cu₂O to fully metallic Cu nanograins followed by partial reoxidation of surface Cu during postelectrolysis air exposure. This study shows that Cu nanowires evolve into completely different metallic Cu nanograin structures supporting the operando (operating) active sites for the CO₂RR.