journal article·2025-06

Enabling High Performance in a Positive Potential of Nitrate‐to‐Ammonia Electrocatalysis Over Mesoporous Core@Shell Cu2O/Cu@PdCu Nanozyme

Lizhi Sun, Xiaowen Min, Jingru Wang, Yuyang Yang, Shu Han, Dongping Fan, Yuqian Jing, Dongdong Xu, Wei Wang, Ben Liu

Advanced Materials· Volume 37· Issue 24
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Abstract

Abstract Electrocatalytic tandem nitrate reduction to ammonia (NO3−‐to‐NH3) offers a promising pathway for energy and environmental sustainability. Although considerable efforts have been presented to modulate the reaction pathways for enhanced NO3−‐to‐NH3 electrocatalysis, these advances often require relatively high overpotentials to balance yield rate and selectivity of NH3, resulting in a remarkable energy inefficiency. Inspired by enzyme catalysis in nature, herein a tandem enzyme‐like electrocatalyst is designed consisting of a core of Cu2O/Cu heterojunction surrounded by mesoporous PdCu shell (Cu2O/Cu@mesoPdCu) that accelerated NO3−‐to‐NH3 electrocatalysis in positive potentials. Impressively, Cu2O/Cu@mesoPdCu nanozymes hold superior performance for robust NH3 electrosynthesis in a fairly positive potential of 0.10 V (versus reversible hydrogen electrode), having Faraday efficiency of 96.2%, yield rate of 13.3 mg h−1 mg−1, and half‐cell energy efficiency of 46.0%. Kinetic studies, in situ spectra and density functional theory calculations revealed that Cu2O/Cu core preferentially adsorbed NO3− and further reduced to *NO2, while active hydrogen radicals enriched on PdCu shell promoted multistep hydrodeoxygenation of *NO2 to NH3 within “semi‐closed” mesoporous microenvironment, both of which synergistically enabled tandem electrocatalysis in positive potentials. Moreover, this enzyme‐like electrocatalyst disclosed better NO3−‐to‐NH3 performance in a more energy‐efficient manner when coupling with more thermodynamically favorable ethanol oxidation reaction.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Ammonia Synthesis and Nitrogen Reduction · Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques · Caching and Content Delivery

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Key Laboratory of Green Chemistry and Technology of Ministry of Education College of Chemistry Sichuan University Chengdu 610064 China

Department of Applied Chemistry CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion University of Science and Technology of China Hefei 230026 China

Jiangsu Key Laboratory of New Power Batteries Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Biomedical Functional Materials School of Chemistry and Materials Science Nanjing Normal University Nanjing 210023 China

Funding

National Key Research and Development Program of China · Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities · Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province

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