Conversion of naturally abundant nitrogen to ammonia is a key (bio)chemical process to sustain life and represents a major challenge in chemistry and biology. Electrochemical reduction is emerging as a sustainable strategy for artificial nitrogen fixation at ambient conditions by tackling the hydrogen- and energy-intensive operations of the Haber–Bosch process. However, it is severely challenged by nitrogen activation and requires efficient catalysts for the nitrogen reduction reaction. Here we report that a boron carbide nanosheet acts as a metal-free catalyst for high-performance electrochemical nitrogen-to-ammonia fixation at ambient conditions. The catalyst can achieve a high ammonia yield of 26.57 μg h –1 mg –1 cat. and a fairly high Faradaic efficiency of 15.95% at –0.75 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode, placing it among the most active aqueous-based nitrogen reduction reaction electrocatalysts. Notably, it also shows high electrochemical stability and excellent selectivity. The catalytic mechanism is assessed using density functional theory calculations.
Despite considerable progress in the field of sustainable ammonia technology, the low efficiency and yield have remained the main bottleneck in artificial nitrogen fixation under ambient conditions. In this work, an ultrathin carbon quantum dot modified hydrogenated mesoporous SrTiO3 heterostructure (CQDs/STO) has been developed as a bifunctional catalyst for enhanced nitrogen reduction. CQDs/STO exhibits a high photocatalytic activity and an ammonia yield of 143 μmol g−1 h−1 has been achieved without any sacrificial reagent, which is about 7 times that of STO nanoparticles. Furthermore, we demonstrate that CQDs/STO can be utilized as a bifunctional catalyst for cascade photoelectrochemical nitrogen reduction, resulting in a ∼50% increase in the ammonia yield. DFT calculations reveal that the synergy between SrTiO3 and CQDs has the capability for photocatalytic reduction of N2 with the O-vacancies in SrTiO3 playing a key role also as electrocatalytic centers. We believe that such a cascade catalytic system provides a new insight into designing photoelectrochemical devices for solar-driven nitrogen fixation.
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