High-Efficiency Electrosynthesis of Ammonia with Selective Reduction of Nitrate in Neutral Media Enabled by Self-Supported Mn 2 CoO 4 Nanoarray

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces Vol. 14; no. 29; pp. 33242 - 33247
• Main Authors: Xie, Lisi, Liu, Qian, Sun, Shengjun, Hu, Long, Zhang, Longcheng, Zhao, Donglin, Liu, Qin, Chen, Jie, Li, Jun, Ouyang, Ling, Alshehri, Abdulmohsen Ali, Hamdy, Mohamed S, Kong, Qingquan, Sun, Xuping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 27.07.2022
• Subjects: nitrate reduction reaction; theoretical calculations; Mn2CoO4 nanoarray; electrocatalysis; ammonia synthesis
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c07818

Ambient ammonia synthesis by electroreduction of nitrate (NO ) provides us a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional Haber-Bosch process. In this work, Mn CoO nanoarray grown on carbon cloth (Mn CoO /CC) serves as a superior electrocatalyst for efficient NH synthesis by selective reduction of NO . When operated in 0.1 M PBS with 0.1 M NaNO , Mn CoO /CC reaches a high Faraday efficiency of 98.6% and a large NH yield up to 11.19 mg/h/cm . Moreover, it exhibits excellent electrocatalytic stability. Theory calculations show that the Mn CoO surface has strong interaction with NO , which can effectively inhibit the occurrence of hydrogen evolution, beneficial for NO -to-NH conversion.