Thiol Ligand-Modified Au for Highly Efficient Electroreduction of Nitrate to Ammonia

Overview

Journal Precis Chem

Publisher American Chemical Society

Specialty Chemistry

Date 2024 Oct 30

PMID 39474030

Authors

Yuheng Wu

Xiangdong Kong

Yechao Su

Jiankang Zhao

Yiling Ma

Tongzheng Ji

Di Wu

Junyang Meng

Yan Liu

Zhigang Geng

Jie Zeng

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Electroreduction of nitrate (NO ) to ammonia (NH) is an environmentally friendly route for NH production, serving as an appealing alternative to the Haber-Bosch process. Recently, various noble metal-based electrocatalysts have been reported for electroreduction of NO . However, the application of pure metal electrocatalysts is still limited by unsatisfactory performance, owing to the weak adsorption of nitrogen-containing intermediates on the surface of pure metal electrocatalysts. In this work, we report thiol ligand-modified Au nanoparticles as the effective electrocatalysts toward electroreduction of NO . Specifically, three mercaptobenzoic acid (MBA) isomers, thiosalicylic acid (ortho-MBA), 3-mercaptobenzoic acid (meta-MBA), and 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (para-MBA), were employed to modify the surface of the Au nanocatalyst. During the NO electroreduction, para-MBA modified Au (denoted as para-Au/C) displayed the highest catalytic activity among these Au-based catalysts. At -1.0 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode (vs RHE), para-Au/C exhibited a partial current density for NH of 472.2 mA cm, which was 1.7 times that of the pristine Au catalyst. Meanwhile, the Faradaic efficiency (FE) for NH reached 98.7% at -1.0 V vs RHE for para-Au/C. The modification of para-MBA significantly improved the intrinsic activity of the Au/C catalyst, thus accelerating the kinetics of NO reduction and giving rise to a high NH yield rate of para-Au/C.

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