Abstract
Nitrogen is the most abundant gas in the Earth’s atmosphere (nearly 78%). The natural process of its fixation to usable nitrogen species, viz., ammonia, is carried out by certain diazotrophic bacteria containing the enzyme ‘nitrogenase’. This transformation is vital for several biochemical and physicochemical processes on Earth. Thus, the fixation of atmospheric N2 has always been a topic of interest. Fritz Haber was acknowledged by the Nobel awarding committee in 1918 for finding a solution for the same, and Carl Bosch developed it in industrial scale. Despite this development, the Haber-Bosch process (HBP) has certain shortcomings, particularly the fact that it requires high temperature and pressure, i.e., the process is not clean, unlike that by Nature. In this context, the electrocatalytic community is striving hard to use several types of molecular catalysts to transform the highly unreactive nitrogen to its more useful form, like ammonia, under ambient conditions.
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Jaydeep Basu has graduated from the Department of Chemistry, St Xavier’s College, Kolkata, and currently, is pursuing post-graduation in chemistry at IIT, Delhi.
Sanjib Ganguly is an associate professor at the Department of Chemistry, St Xavier’s College, Kolkata. He holds a PhD in inorganic chemistry from IACS, Kolkata (under JU) and his research interests include redox non-innocent ligands and their application in electron transfer organic reactions/catalysis.
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Basu, J., Ganguly, S. Electrocatalytic Nitrogen Reduction Reaction (NRR). Reson 28, 279–291 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-023-1548-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-023-1548-x