Electroreduction of carbon dioxide with renewable electricity holds promise for achieving net-zero carbon emissions. Single-site catalysts have been reported to catalyze carbon-carbon (C-C) coupling—the indispensable step for more valuable multi-carbon (C2+) products—but were proven to be transformed in situ to metallic agglomerations under working conditions. Here, we report a stable single-site copper coordination polymer (Cu(OH)BTA) with periodic neighboring coppers and it exhibits 1.5 times increase of C2H4selectivity compared to its metallic counterpart at 500 mA cm−2. In-situ/operando X-ray absorption, Raman, and infrared spectroscopies reveal that the catalyst remains structurally stable and does not undergo a dynamic transformation during reaction. Electrochemical and kinetic isotope effect analyses together with computational calculations show that neighboring Cu in the polymer provides suitably-distanced dual sites that enable the energetically favorable formation of an *OCCHO intermediate post a rate-determining step of CO hydrogenation. Accommodation of this intermediate imposes little changes of conformational energy to the catalyst structure during the C-C coupling. We stably operate full-device CO2electrolysis at an industry-relevant current of one ampere for 67 h in a membrane electrode assembly. The coordination polymers provide a perspective on designing molecularly stable, single-site catalysts for electrochemical CO2conversion.
Electrocatalysts are crucial to drive the electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO2RR) which lower the energy barrier, tune the intricate reaction pathways and suppress competitive side‐reaction. Beyond the efficient active sites and advantageous local environment, a rapid mass transfer ability is also crucial for the catalyst design. However, it is rare that research has been done to investigate in detail the mass transfer process in CO2RR, and expose the underlying relationship between mass transfer and final performance. Here, a single‐atom Fe‐N‐C catalyst is shown with a highly ordered porous substrate containing hierarchical micropores, mesopores, and macropores. Such a delicate porous structure significantly facilitates the mass transfer process toward the isolated Fe sites, achieving excellent CO2RR performance, especially in the limited mass transfer region in a H‐cell with a maximum CO partial current density of ‐19 mA cm−2. Operando electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and relevant distributed relaxation times analysis reveal the rapidly decreased mass transfer resistance with the increase of reduction potential. The Lattice Boltzmann method with Discrete Element method (LBM‐DEM) simulations are further performed to exhibit the origin of enhanced CO2RR performance from the facilitated gas diffusion process.