An Amorphous Noble‐Metal‐Free Electrocatalyst that Enables Nitrogen Fixation under Ambient Conditions

作者：Chade Lv, Chunshuang Yan, Gang Chen, Yu Ding, Jingxue Sun, Yansong Zhou, Guihua Yu · 发表于：Angewandte Chemie International Edition · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1002/anie.201801538 · 被引用次数：666 · 研究领域：Ammonia Synthesis and Nitrogen Reduction、Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques、Catalytic Processes in Materials Science

Abstract N 2 fixation by the electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) under ambient conditions is regarded as a potential approach to achieve NH 3 production, which still heavily relies on the Haber–Bosch process at the cost of huge energy and massive production of CO 2 . A noble‐metal‐free Bi 4 V 2 O 11 /CeO 2 hybrid with an amorphous phase (BVC‐A) is used as the cathode for electrocatalytic NRR. The amorphous Bi 4 V 2 O 11 contains significant defects, which play a role as active sites. The CeO 2 not only serves as a trigger to induce the amorphous structure, but also establishes band alignment with Bi 4 V 2 O 11 for rapid interfacial charge transfer. Remarkably, BVC‐A shows outstanding electrocatalytic NRR performance with high average yield (NH 3 : 23.21 μg h −1 mg −1 cat. , Faradaic efficiency: 10.16 %) under ambient conditions, which is superior to the Bi 4 V 2 O 11 /CeO 2 hybrid with crystalline phase (BVC‐C) counterpart.