Iron Diboride (FeB2) for the Electroreduction of NO to NH3

Guike Zhang; Fuzhou Wang; Yuying Wan; Yali Guo; Ke Chu

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.3c01207

Iron Diboride (FeB₂) for the Electroreduction of NO to NH₃

Inorg Chem. 2023 Jun 5;62(22):8487-8493. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.3c01207. Epub 2023 May 23.

Authors

Guike Zhang¹, Fuzhou Wang¹, Yuying Wan¹, Yali Guo¹, Ke Chu¹

Affiliation

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

PMID: 37219358
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.3c01207

Abstract

We report iron diboride (FeB₂) as a high-performance metal diboride catalyst for electrochemical NO-to-NH₃ reduction (NORR), which shows a maximum NH₃ yield rate of 289.3 μmol h^-1 cm^-2 and a NH₃-Faradaic efficiency of 93.8% at -0.4 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode. Theoretical computations reveal that Fe and B sites synergetically activate the NO molecule, while the protonation of NO is energetically more favorable on B sites. Meanwhile, both Fe and B sites preferentially absorb NO over H atoms to suppress the competing hydrogen evolution.