Industrial-Level Modulation of Catalyst-Electrolyte Microenvironment for Electrocatalytic CO₂ Reduction: Challenges and Advancements

CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR), as a promising strategy for storing renewable energy and promoting carbon resource recycling, is critical for industrial development. Previous reports have extensively explored catalyst-electrolyte microenvironmental modulation to elucidate coupling mechanisms and enhance catalytic conversion to multicarbon products. Currently, most reviews mainly focus on the impact of microenvironment modulation in low-current systems on mechanism exploration and performance optimization, yet few of them can integrate macroscopic applications with microscopic investigations to explore the relevance between industrial development and catalyst-electrolyte microenvironmental optimization. To address the gap, this review focuses on summarizing the challenges and advancements in microenvironment modulation for the development of high-current devices. By introducing models of different scales sequentially, the connection between microenvironmental modulation and device performance is clarified. Then, various invalidation mechanisms and effective solutions are summarized to intuitively expound the impact of microenvironment modulation on high-current stability. Meanwhile, as an intuitive measure of the rationality of microenvironment modulation, evaluation methods of device performance should be refined, which are also covered in further detail below. Finally, more valuable and challenging prospects are discussed for guiding the further industrial transformation of CO₂RR.