ZIF-induced d-band Modification in Bimetallic Nanocatalyst: Achieving >44% Efficiency in Ambient Nitrogen Reduction Reaction
Abstract
Electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) offers a sustainable solution towards ammonia production but suffers poor reaction performance due to preferential catalyst-H formation and the consequential hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, we electronically modify PtAu electrocatalyst d-band structure using zeolitic-imidazole framework (ZIF) to achieve a faradaic efficiency (FE) of >44% with high ammonia yield rate of >161 µg.mg cat -1 .h -1 at ambient conditions. Our strategy lowers electrocatalyst d-band position to weaken H adsorption and concurrently creates electron deficient sites to kinetically drive NRR by promoting catalyst-N 2 interaction. The ZIF coating on electrocatalyst doubles as a hydrophobic layer to suppress HER, further improves FE by >44-fold compared to without ZIF (~1%). Experimental and in-silico studies reveal PtAu-N ZIF interaction is key to enable strong N 2 adsorption over H atom. Our electrocatalytic design is universal and can be extended across metal electrocatalysts for diverse applications in NRR and air-to-fuel conversion.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Challenges and opportunities with drug repurposing: finding strategies to find alternative uses of therapeutics
- Challenges in Chagas Disease Drug Development
- T Cell Specificity: A Great Challenge in Chagas Disease
- Benznidazole treatment leads to DNA damage in Trypanosoma cruzi and the persistence of rare widely dispersed non-replicative amastigotes in mice
- Rapid Molecular Detection of Terbinafine-resistant Dermatophytes
- Identifying novel drugs with new modes of action for neglected tropical fungal skin diseases (fungal skinNTDs) using an Open Source Drug discovery approach
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.