High-Performance Electrochemical Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia under Ambient Conditions Using a FeOOH Nanorod Catalyst

作者：Qin Liu, Qian Liu, Lisi Xie, Yuyao Ji, Tingshuai Li, Bing Zhang, Na Li, Bo Tang, Yang Liu, Shuyan Gao, Yonglan Luo, Lingmin Yu, Qingquan Kong, Xuping Sun · 发表于：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1021/acsami.2c00436 · 被引用次数：120 · 研究领域：Ammonia Synthesis and Nitrogen Reduction、Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques、Caching and Content Delivery

Electrocatalytic nitrate reduction is promising as an environmentally friendly process to produce high value-added ammonia with simultaneous removal of nitrate, a widespread nitrogen pollutant, for water treatment; however, efficient electrocatalysts with high selectivity are required for ammonia formation. In this work, FeOOH nanorod with intrinsic oxygen vacancy supported on carbon paper (FeOOH/CP) is proposed as a high-performance electrocatalyst for converting nitrate to ammonia at room temperature. When operated in a 0.1 M phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution with 0.1 M NaNO 3, FeOOH/CP is able to obtain a large NH 3 yield of 2419 μg h –1 cm –2 and a surprisingly high Faradic efficiency of 92% with excellent stability. Density functional theory calculation demonstrates that the potential-determining step for nitrate reduction over FeOOH (200) is *NO 2 H + H + + e – → *NO + H 2 O.