Oxygen vacancy-regulated nanorod array electrodes for boosting the electrocatalytic synthesis of ammonia from nitrate wastewater

Ziyi Yang; Yudong Li; Dan Liu; Maosen Song; Yang Gao; Bin Yang; Yanzhen He; Enshan Han; Qiang Zhang; Xiaohui Yang

doi:10.1039/d4cc02726d

Oxygen vacancy-regulated nanorod array electrodes for boosting the electrocatalytic synthesis of ammonia from nitrate wastewater

Chem Commun (Camb). 2024 Sep 10;60(73):9950-9953. doi: 10.1039/d4cc02726d.

Authors

Ziyi Yang¹, Yudong Li², Dan Liu², Maosen Song¹, Yang Gao¹, Bin Yang¹, Yanzhen He¹, Enshan Han¹, Qiang Zhang^{3

4}, Xiaohui Yang⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300400, China. [email protected].
² Key Laboratory of Bio-based Material Science & Technology, Northeast Forestry University, Ministry of Education, Harbin, 150040, China.
³ School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Chongqing University of Technology, Chongqing 400054, P. R. China. [email protected].
⁴ National Engineering Laboratory for Methanol to Olefins, Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, P. R. China.
⁵ Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chongqing, 400714, China. [email protected].

PMID: 39171745
DOI: 10.1039/d4cc02726d

Abstract

The adsorption of nitrate is the key to enhancing the electrocatalytic nitrate reduction reaction (NitRR). Herein, a typical hydrolysis-coupled redox (HCR) reaction has been designed to prepare unique 3D Cu/Fe₂O₃ core-shell nanorod array cathodes with controllable oxygen vacancy concentrations for NitRR. The optimal Cu/Fe₂O₃-13 achieves a high nitrate conversion of 99.10% and ammonia selectivity of 98.30%. The outstanding electrochemical performance is attributed to the enhancement mechanism of OVs and a unique nanorod array structure with a high density of surface-exposed OVs and high-throughput transport pathways for ion-aspects.