Authors: Yan Liu, Jie Wei, Zhengwu Yang, Lirong Zheng, Jiankang Zhao, Zhimin Song, Yuhan Zhou, Jiajie Cheng, Junyang Meng, Zhigang Geng, Jie Zeng
Published: 2024-04-29
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48035-4
Source: Full article
AbstractThe nitrate (NO3−) electroreduction into ammonia (NH3) represents a promising approach for sustainable NH3 synthesis. However, the variation of adsorption configurations renders great difficulties in the simultaneous optimization of binding energy for the intermediates. Though the extensively reported Cu-based electrocatalysts benefit NO3− adsorption, one of the key issues lies in the accumulation of nitrite (NO2−) due to its weak adsorption, resulting in the rapid deactivation of catalysts and sluggish kinetics of subsequent hydrogenation steps. Here we report a tandem electrocatalyst by combining Cu single atoms catalysts with adjacent Co3O4 nanosheets to boost the electroreduction of NO3− to NH3. The obtained tandem catalyst exhibits a yield rate for NH3 of 114.0 mg$${}_{{{{{{\rm{NH}}}}}}_3}$$