Regulation Strategy of Nanostructured Engineering on Indium-Based Materials for Electrocatalytic Conversion of CO₂

Electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction (CO2RR), as an emerging technology, can combine with sustainable energies to convert CO2 into high value-added products, providing an effective pathway to realize carbon neutrality. However, the high activation energy of CO2, low mass transfer, and competitive hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) leads to the unsatisfied catalytic activity. Recently, Indium (In)-based materials have attracted significant attention in CO2RR and a series of regulation strategies of nanostructured engineering are exploited to rationally design various advanced In-based electrocatalysts, which forces the necessary of a comprehensive and fundamental summary, but there is still a scarcity. Herein, this review provides a systematic discussion of the nanostructure engineering of In-based materials for the efficient electrocatalytic conversion of CO(2)to fuels. These efficient regulation strategies including morphology, size, composition, defects, surface modification, interfacial structure, alloying, and single-atom structure, are summarized for exploring the internal relationship between the CO2RR performance and the physicochemical properties of In-based catalysts. The correlation of electronic structure and adsorption behavior of reaction intermediates are highlighted to gain in-depth understanding of catalytic reaction kinetics for CO2 RR. Moreover, the challenges and opportunities of In-based materials are proposed, which is expected to inspire the development of other effective catalysts for CO2 RR.