Achieving 59% faradaic efficiency of the N2 electroreduction reaction in an aqueous Zn-N2 battery by facilely regulating the surface mass transport on metallic copper

Cheng Du; Yijing Gao; Jianguo Wang; Wei Chen

doi:10.1039/c9cc05978d

Achieving 59% faradaic efficiency of the N₂ electroreduction reaction in an aqueous Zn-N₂ battery by facilely regulating the surface mass transport on metallic copper

Chem Commun (Camb). 2019 Nov 4;55(85):12801-12804. doi: 10.1039/c9cc05978d. Epub 2019 Oct 9.

Authors

Cheng Du¹, Yijing Gao², Jianguo Wang², Wei Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, Jilin, China. weichen@ciac.ac.cn and University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230029, Anhui, China.
² Institute of Industrial Catalysis, State Key Laboratory Breeding Base of Green-Chemical Synthesis Technology, College of Chemical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310032, P. R. China.

PMID: 31595277
DOI: 10.1039/c9cc05978d

Abstract

Herein, for the first time, we find that the surface mass transport properties of catalysts play critical roles in determining the electrocatalytic NRR selectivity over the competitive HER in aqueous media on metallic Cu. In particular, by controlling the monolayer thickness of Cu nanoparticles with a minimum mass transport barrier, the faradaic efficiency (FE) of the NRR can be dramatically enhanced to 33% in the H-type cell test and even to 59% in a new-type Zn-N₂ aqueous battery.