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Single-atom Co alloyed Ru for electrocatalytic nitrite reduction to ammonia

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Abstract

Electrochemical converting NO −2 into NH3 (NO2RR) holds an enormous prospect to attain efficient NH3 electrosynthesis and polluted NO −2 mitigation. Herein, we report single-atom Co alloyed Ru (Co1Ru) as an efficient and durable NO2RR catalyst. Extensive experimental and theoretical investigations reveal that single-atom Co alloying of Ru enables the construction of Co1Ru heteronuclear active sites to synergistically promote NO −2 activation/hydrogenation while suppressing the competitive H2 evolution, rendering the greatly enhanced activity and selectivity of Co1Ru towards the NO2RR. Consequently, Co1Ru assembled within a flow cell exhibits an impressive NH3 yield rate of 2379.2 µmol·h−1·cm−2 with an NH3-Faradaic efficiency of 92% at a high current density of 415.9 mA·cm−2, which is among the highest NO2RR performances reported to date.

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Acknowledgement

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52161025).

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  1. Fuzhou Wang and Jiaqi Xiang contributed equally to this work.

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  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou, 730070, China

    Fuzhou Wang, Jiaqi Xiang, Guike Zhang, Kai Chen & Ke Chu

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  1. Fuzhou Wang
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  2. Jiaqi Xiang
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Correspondence to Ke Chu.

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Wang, F., Xiang, J., Zhang, G. et al. Single-atom Co alloyed Ru for electrocatalytic nitrite reduction to ammonia. Nano Res. 17, 3660–3666 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6261-2

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