Amorphous Boron Carbide on Titanium Dioxide Nanobelt Arrays for High-Efficiency Electrocatalytic NO Reduction to NH3

Jie Liang; Pengyu Liu; Qinye Li; Tingshuai Li; Luchao Yue; Yongsong Luo; Qian Liu; Na Li; Bo Tang; Abdulmohsen Ali Alshehri; Imran Shakir; Philips O Agboola; Chenghua Sun; Xuping Sun

doi:10.1002/anie.202202087

Amorphous Boron Carbide on Titanium Dioxide Nanobelt Arrays for High-Efficiency Electrocatalytic NO Reduction to NH₃

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2022 Apr 25;61(18):e202202087. doi: 10.1002/anie.202202087. Epub 2022 Mar 8.

Authors

Jie Liang¹, Pengyu Liu¹, Qinye Li², Tingshuai Li¹, Luchao Yue¹, Yongsong Luo¹, Qian Liu³, Na Li⁴, Bo Tang⁴, Abdulmohsen Ali Alshehri⁵, Imran Shakir⁶, Philips O Agboola⁶, Chenghua Sun², Xuping Sun^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, Sichuan, China.
² Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Center for Translational Atomaterials, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia.
³ Institute for Advanced Study, Chengdu University, Chengdu, 610106, Sichuan, China.
⁴ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, 250014, Shandong, China.
⁵ Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80203, Jeddah, 21589, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ College of Engineering Al-Muzahmia Branch, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh, 11421, Saudi Arabia.

PMID: 35212442
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202202087

Abstract

Electrocatalytic NO reduction is regarded as an attractive strategy to degrade the NO contaminant into useful NH₃ , but the lack of efficient and stable electrocatalysts to facilitate such multiple proton-coupled electron-transfer processes impedes its applications. Here, we report on developing amorphous B_2.6 C supported on a TiO₂ nanoarray on a Ti plate (a-B_2.6 C@TiO₂ /Ti) as an NH₃ -producing nanocatalyst with appreciable activity and durability toward the NO electroreduction. It shows a yield of 3678.6 μg h^-1 cm^-2 and a FE of 87.6 %, superior to TiO₂ /Ti (563.5 μg h^-1 cm^-2 , 42.6 %) and a-B_2.6 C/Ti (2499.2 μg h^-1 cm^-2 , 85.6 %). An a-B_2.6 C@TiO₂ /Ti-based Zn-NO battery achieves a power density of 1.7 mW cm^-2 with an NH₃ yield of 1125 μg h^-1 cm^-2 . An in-depth understanding of catalytic mechanisms is gained by theoretical calculations.

Keywords: Boron Carbide; Density Functional Theory; Electrocalysis; NH3 Production; Nitric Oxide Reduction Reaction.