Sulfur-modified silver telluride nanorods for high-efficient electrocatalytic reduction of nitrogen to ammonia

Electrochemical synthesis of ammonia has attracted widespread attention because of its mild reaction conditions, low energy consumption, and no greenhouse gas generation, but suffers from low ammonia production rate and Faraday efficiency. Here, sulfur-modified silver telluride nanorods (S–Ag 2 Te NRs) have been synthesized as high-efficiency catalysts for the electrochemical synthesis of ammonia. The sulfur modification would offer higher adsorption energy for nitrogen intermediates and more active sites for the hydrogenation of nitrogen to ammonia. Therefore, the S–Ag 2 Te NRs show excellent electrocatalytic performance with an NH 3 yield of 26.44 μg h −1 mg −1 cat. and Faradaic efficiency of 17.48%, which is much higher than that of Ag 2 Te NRs. This work has opened an exciting sulfur-modified strategy to design effective catalysts with diverse morphologies for electrochemical ammonia synthesis.