Two-Dimensional Mosaic Bismuth Nanosheets for Highly Selective Ambient Electrocatalytic Nitrogen Reduction

By Laiquan Li, Cheng Tang, Bingquan Xia, Huanyu Jin, Yao Zheng, S. Qiao. ACS Catalysis, 2019

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Electrochemical fixation of N2 to ammonia is a promising strategy to store renewable energy and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. However, it usually suffers from extremely low ammonia yield and Faradaic efficiency because of the lack of efficient electrocatalysts and the competing hydrogen evolution reaction. Herein, we report that the semiconducting bismuth can be a promising catalyst for ambient electrocatalytic N2 reduction reaction (NRR). A two-dimensional mosaic bismuth nanosheet (Bi NS) was fabricated via an in situ electrochemical reduction process and exhibited favorable average ammonia yield and Faradaic efficiency as high as 2.54 ± 0.16 μgNH3 cm–2 h–1 (∼13.23 μg mgcat.–1 h–1) and 10.46 ± 1.45% at −0.8 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode in 0.1 M Na2SO4. The high NRR electrocatalytic activity of the Bi NS could be attributed to the sufficient exposure of edge sites coupled with effective p-orbital electron delocalization in the mosaic bismuth nanosheets. In addition, the semiconducting featu...

Subfields: Catalysis, Materials Chemistry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e754340acf21e618c249171a89b2067c3eb18050