Harnessing oxygen vacancy and surface hydroxyl synergy in Cu/ CeAlO x for low‐temperature reverse water–gas shift reaction

Abstract Designing highly efficient catalysts for low‐temperature reverse water–gas shift (RWGS) reaction is important as it could reduce energy consumption and operating costs, as well as suppress the sintering of Cu site to prolong catalyst lifetime for the industrial scale‐up. However, it typically requires >550 °C to reach equilibrium conversion over common Cu‐based catalyst. The optimized Cu/CeAlO x catalyst demonstrates outstanding low‐temperature performance and stability regarding CO 2 conversion (56.8%) and CO selectivity (100%) under the experimental conditions (i.e., H 2 /CO 2 = 4, 550 °C, 30,000 mL g −1 h −1 of gas hourly space velocity). The characterizations including in situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations reveal that highly dispersed and electronically modulated Cu species supported on CeAlO x with abundant oxygen vacancies and surface hydroxyl groups enhance CO 2 activation by increasing the local electron density of Cu through strong metal–support interactions. These findings provide crucial insights for developing robust catalysts to advance applications in CO 2 reduction.