Peaks and pitfalls of electrocatalytic CO 2 reduction descriptor models
Jihun Oh
Nature Catalysis, Published online: 13 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41929-026-01526-7 Descriptors have been used to predict product selectivity in electrocatalytic CO2 reduction on metals. This Analysis confirms that CO adsorption energy is suitable for predicting CO, but the work function is also needed to predict HCOO− and H2 selectivity. By contrast, the mechanism for C–C coupled products is too complex to predict using these simple descriptors.