P-Doped graphene toward enhanced electrocatalytic N2 reduction

Tongwei Wu; Xinyi Li; Xiaojuan Zhu; Shiyong Mou; Yonglan Luo; Xifeng Shi; Abdullah M Asiri; Yanning Zhang; Baozhan Zheng; Haitao Zhao; Xuping Sun

doi:10.1039/c9cc09179c

P-Doped graphene toward enhanced electrocatalytic N₂ reduction

Chem Commun (Camb). 2020 Feb 11;56(12):1831-1834. doi: 10.1039/c9cc09179c. Epub 2020 Jan 17.

Authors

Tongwei Wu¹, Xinyi Li², Xiaojuan Zhu³, Shiyong Mou¹, Yonglan Luo³, Xifeng Shi⁴, Abdullah M Asiri⁵, Yanning Zhang¹, Baozhan Zheng⁶, Haitao Zhao⁷, Xuping Sun¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, Sichuan, China. [email protected].
² State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases, Department of Orthodontics, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan, China.
³ Chemical Synthesis and Pollution Control Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, China West Normal University, Nanchong 637002, Sichuan, China.
⁴ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, Shandong, China.
⁵ Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science & Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials Research, King Abdulaziz University, P. O. Box 80203, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ College of Chemistry, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, Sichuan, China. [email protected].
⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. [email protected].

PMID: 31950935
DOI: 10.1039/c9cc09179c

Abstract

Catalysts for the N₂ reduction reaction (NRR) are at the heart of key alternative technology to the Haber-Bosch process for NH₃ synthesis, and are expected to optimize the interplay between efficiency, activity and selectivity. Here, we report our recent finding that P-doped graphene shows superior NRR performances in aqueous media at present, with a remarkably large NH₃ yield of 32.33 μg h^-1 mg_cat.^-1 and a high faradaic efficiency of 20.82% at -0.65 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode. The mechanism is clarified by density functional theory calculations.