Electroreduction of nitrogen to ammonia on nanoporous gold
The electrochemical reduction of nitrogen (N 2 ) to ammonia (NH 3 ) has attracted attention as an emerging alternative to the traditional Haber-Bosch process to synthesize NH 3 . Unfortunately, electrocatalytic N 2 reduction processes are still very inefficient. Here we report three-dimensional nano...
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Published in | Nanoscale Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 1717 - 1722 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
Royal Society of Chemistry
28.01.2021
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The electrochemical reduction of nitrogen (N
2
) to ammonia (NH
3
) has attracted attention as an emerging alternative to the traditional Haber-Bosch process to synthesize NH
3
. Unfortunately, electrocatalytic N
2
reduction processes are still very inefficient. Here we report three-dimensional nanoporous gold (NPG) as an efficient and stable electrocatalyst for the N
2
reduction reaction at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. NPG can deliver a high NH
3
yield rate of 45.7 μg h
−1
mg
−1
cat.
and a high faradaic efficiency of 3.41% at an ultralow potential of −0.10 V
versus
the reversible hydrogen electrode, in 0.1 M HCl solution. These values are much higher than those obtained for most of the reported electrocatalysts under similar experimental conditions. Structural characterization and density functional theory calculations reveal that the excellent electrocatalytic activity of NPG mainly results from the high density of geometrically required surface steps and kinks.
Nanoporous gold as a highly efficient electrochemical nitrogen reduction catalyst. |
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Bibliography: | 10.1039/d0nr07362h Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2040-3364 2040-3372 |
DOI: | 10.1039/d0nr07362h |