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Research Article

Electrocatalytic N2 reduction to NH3 with high Faradaic efficiency enabled by vanadium phosphide nanoparticle on V foil

Peipei Wei1,§, Qin Geng1,§, Ali Imran Channa1, Xin Tong1, Yongsong Luo1, Siyu Lu2, Guang Chen3, Shuyan Gao4, Zhiming Wang1( ), Xuping Sun1( )
Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China
Green Catalysis Center and College of Chemistry, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China
The Key Laboratory of Life-Organic Analysis and Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Intermediates and Analysis of Natural Medicine, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qufu Normal University, Qufu 273165, China
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang 453007, China

§ Peipei Wei and Qin Geng contributed equally to this work.

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Abstract

To develop highly efficient electrochemical catalysts for N2 fixation is important to sustainable ambient NH3 production through the N2 reduction reaction (NRR). Herein, we demonstrate the development of vanadium phosphide nanoparticle on V foil as a high- efficiency and stable catalyst for ambient NH3 production with excellent selectivity. The high Faradaic efficiency of 22% with a large NH3 yield of 8.35 × 10-11 mol·s-1·cm-2 was obtained at 0 V vs. the reversible hydrogen electrode in acid solution, superior to all previously studied V-based NRR catalysts. Density functional theory calculations are also utilized to have an insight into the catalytic mechanism.

Keywords

vanadium phosphide nanoparticleN2 reduction reactionelectrocatalysisdensity functional theory

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Nano Research
Volume 13 Issue 11,
November 2020
Pages 2967-2972
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-020-2956-9
Cite this article:
Wei P, Geng Q, Channa AI, et al. Electrocatalytic N2 reduction to NH3 with high Faradaic efficiency enabled by vanadium phosphide nanoparticle on V foil. Nano Research, 2020, 13(11): 2967-2972. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2956-9
Topics:
AmmoniaCatalyst selectivity Density functional theoryNanoparticlesVanadium compounds

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Received: 23 April 2020
Revised: 12 June 2020
Accepted: 25 June 2020
Published: 30 July 2020
© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
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