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 challenge. 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. reversible hydrogen electrode. Meanwhile, Ag nanoparticles achieve a deuterated ethylene production rate of 3.72 × 10³ mmol h^–1 g_cat^–1 and an excellent long-term stability with deuterated ethylene Faradaic efficiencies 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 spectroscopies 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.