In Situ Growth of Fe2O3 Nanorod Arrays on Carbon Cloth with Rapid Charge Transfer for Efficient Nitrate Electroreduction to Ammonia

Tingsong Li; Chun Tang; Heng Guo; Haoran Wu; Chao Duan; Hao Wang; Fengying Zhang; Yuehan Cao; Guidong Yang; Ying Zhou

doi:10.1021/acsami.2c14215

In Situ Growth of Fe₂O₃ Nanorod Arrays on Carbon Cloth with Rapid Charge Transfer for Efficient Nitrate Electroreduction to Ammonia

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Oct 25. doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c14215. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Tingsong Li^{1

2}, Chun Tang^{1

2}, Heng Guo², Haoran Wu², Chao Duan², Hao Wang², Fengying Zhang², Yuehan Cao², Guidong Yang³, Ying Zhou^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu610500, China.
² School of New Energy and Materials, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu610500, China.
³ XJTU-Oxford Joint International Research Laboratory of Catalysis, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an710049, China.

PMID: 36282959
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c14215

Abstract

Electrochemical reduction of nitrate to ammonia (NH₃), a green NH₃ production route upon combining with renewable energy sources, is an appealing and alternative method to the Haber-Bosch process. However, this process not only involves the complicated eight-electron reduction to transform nitrate into various nitrogen products but simultaneously suffers from the competitive hydrogen evolution reaction, challenged by a lack of efficient catalysts. Herein, the in situ growth of Fe₂O₃ nanorod arrays on carbon cloth (Fe₂O₃ NRs/CC) is reported to exhibit a high NH₃ yield rate of 328.17 μmol h^-1 cm^-2 at -0.9 V versus RHE, outperforming most of the reported Fe catalysts. An in situ growth strategy provides massive exposed active sites and a fast electron-transport channel between the carbon cloth and Fe₂O₃, which accelerates the charge-transport rate and facilitates the conversion of nitrate to NH₃. In situ Raman spectroscopy in conjunction with attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy reveals the catalytic mechanism of nitrate to NH₃. Our study provides not only an efficient catalyst for NH₃ production but also useful guidelines for the pathways and mechanism of nitrate electroreduction to NH₃.

Keywords: Fe2O3 nanorods arrays; ammonia synthesis; catalytic mechanism; charge transfer; nitrate reduction reaction.