Highly efficient electrocatalytic deuteration of acetylene to deuterated ethylene using deuterium oxide

Deuterated ethylene is an important building block for manufacturing various deuterated polyolefins and chemicals.However,low-cost and large-scale production of deuterated ethylene still remain a great chal-lenge.Herein,with D2O as the D source,we first propose an electrocatalytic deuteration strategy for continuous production of deuterated ethylene from acetylene under ambient conditions.Specially,Ag nanoparticles exhibit a very high deuterated ethylene Faradic efficiency of up to 99.3％at-0.6 V vs.re-versible hydrogen electrode.Meanwhile,Ag nanoparticles achieve a deuterated ethylene production rate of 3.72 x 103 mmol h-1gcat-1 and an excellent long-term stability with deuterated ethylene Faradaic effi-ciencies of～95％in a two-electrode flow cell,which substantially outperform state-of-the-art values for previously reported deuterated alkenes.In-situ electrochemical Infrared absorption and Raman spectro-scopies reveal superior acetylene absorption and formation of deuterated ethylene on Ag nanoparticles.This efficient electrocatalytic deuteration strategy opens a new window for continuous and economic production of deuterated alkenes.