Ambient electrochemical N2 reduction to NH3 under alkaline conditions enabled by a layered K2Ti4O9 nanobelt

Dan Wu; Huanbo Wang; Hong Huang; Rong Zhang; Lei Ji; Hongyu Chen; Yonglan Luo; Jinmao You; Dianping Tang; Zhonghai Zhang; Xuping Sun

doi:10.1039/c9cc02409c

Ambient electrochemical N₂ reduction to NH₃ under alkaline conditions enabled by a layered K₂Ti₄O₉ nanobelt

Chem Commun (Camb). 2019 Jul 4;55(52):7546-7549. doi: 10.1039/c9cc02409c. Epub 2019 Jun 12.

Authors

Dan Wu¹, Huanbo Wang², Hong Huang³, Rong Zhang³, Lei Ji³, Hongyu Chen⁴, Yonglan Luo⁵, Jinmao You⁶, Dianping Tang⁷, Zhonghai Zhang¹, Xuping Sun³

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Dongchuan Road 500, Shanghai 200241, China. zhzhang@chem.ecnu.edu.cn.
² School of Environment and Resource, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, Sichuan, China.
³ Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, Sichuan, China. xpsun@uestc.edu.cn.
⁴ Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, Sichuan, China. xpsun@uestc.edu.cn and Chemical Synthesis and Pollution Control Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, China West Normal University, Nanchong 637002, Sichuan, China.
⁵ Chemical Synthesis and Pollution Control Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, China West Normal University, Nanchong 637002, Sichuan, China.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Life-Organic Analysis of Shandong Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qufu Normal University, Qufu 273165, Shandong, China.
⁷ Key Laboratory for Analytical Science of Food Safety and Biology (MOE & Fujian Province), State Key Laboratory of Photocatalysis on Energy and Environment, Department of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, Fujian, China.

PMID: 31188371
DOI: 10.1039/c9cc02409c

Abstract

Using electrocatalytic N₂ reduction to make NH₃ is considered to be an attractive environmentally-friendly alternative to the Haber-Bosch process, which is rather energy-intensive and has heavy CO₂ emissions. However, only limited success has been achieved in identifying metal oxides as effective electrocatalysts for the N₂ reduction reaction (NRR) under alkaline conditions. In this communication, we report that a K₂Ti₄O₉ nanobelt is able to effectively electrocatalyze the ambient NRR for N₂-to-NH₃ fixation at alkaline pH. When tested in 0.1 M KOH, a high NH₃ yield of 22.88 μg h^-1 mg^-1_cat. and a faradaic efficiency of 5.87% were attained. Moreover, K₂Ti₄O₉ also demonstrates good selectivity and high electrochemical stability for NH₃ formation.