2020/05/19 by Wei Peng, Mingsheng Luo, Xiandong Xu +5 · 2 citations
Chemical Engineering · Energy · Materials Science · #Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques #Ammonia Synthesis and Nitrogen Reduction #MXene and MAX Phase Materials
paper · doi:10.1002/aenm.202001364
openalex publication_date 2020/05/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/10
Abstract The electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) process usually suffers extremely low Faradaic efficiency and ammonia yields due to sluggish NN dissociation. Herein, single‐atomic ruthenium modified Mo 2 CT X MXene nanosheets as an efficient electrocatalyst for nitrogen fixation at ambient conditions are reported. The catalyst achieves a Faradaic efficiency of 25.77% and ammonia yield rate of 40.57 µg h −1 mg −1 at ‐0.3 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode in 0.5 m K 2 SO 4 solution. Operando X‐ray absorption spectroscopy studies and density functional theory calculations reveal that single‐atomic Ru anchored on MXene nanosheets act as important electron back‐donation centers for N 2 activation, which can not only promote nitrogen adsorption and activation behavior of the catalyst, but also lower the thermodynamic energy barrier of the first hydrogenation step. This work opens up a promising avenue to manipulate catalytic performance of electrocatalysts utilizing an atomic‐level engineering strategy.