Double boron atom-doped graphdiynes as efficient metal-free electrocatalysts for nitrogen reduction into ammonia: a first-principles study

Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2021 Aug 28;23(32):17683-17692. doi: 10.1039/d1cp02391h. Epub 2021 Aug 10.

Abstract

The electroreduction of dinitrogen (N2) is an attractive method for ambient ammonia (NH3) synthesis. In this work, double boron atom-anchored two-dimensional (2D) graphdiyne (GDY-2B) electrocatalysts have been designed and examined for the N2 reduction reaction (NRR) by density functional theory computations. Our calculations revealed that double boron atoms can be strongly embedded in a graphdiyne monolayer. In particular, configuration GDY-2B(S2S2') with two boron atoms substituting two equivalent sp-carbon atoms of diacetylene linkages exhibits excellent catalytic performance for reducing N2, with an extremely low overpotential of 0.12 V. The "pull-pull" mechanism imposed by doped double boron atoms is responsible for the magnificent effect of N2 activation. Besides, the competitive reaction of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is suppressed owing to a large ΔGH* value of -1.25 eV. Based on these results, our study provides useful guidelines for designing effective double atomic catalysts (DACs) based on nonmetal 2D nanosheets for effective electrochemical reduction reactions.