• 文献标题:   Electrocatalytic N-2 Reduction on FeS2 Nanoparticles Embedded in Graphene Oxide in Acid and Neutral Conditions
  • 文献类型:   Article
  • 作  者:   GAO LF, GUO CY, ZHAO MZ, YANG H, MA XJ, LIU CQ, LIU XJ, SUN X, WEI Q
  • 作者关键词:   electrocatalytic, nitrogen reduction reaction, transitionmetal oxide, fes2@go, lowcoordinated active site
  • 出版物名称:   ACS APPLIED MATERIALS INTERFACES
  • ISSN:   1944-8244 EI 1944-8252
  • 通讯作者地址:  
  • 被引频次:   8
  • DOI:   10.1021/acsami.1c15678 EA OCT 2021
  • 出版年:   2021

▎ 摘  要

The development of stable, low-cost, and highly efficient electrocatalysts for the N-2 reduction reaction (NRR) process is challenging but crucial for ammonia production. Herein, we demonstrate the synthesis of pyrite nanoparticles wrapped by graphene oxide (FeS2@GO) acting as a highly efficient NRR catalyst in a wide pH range. The FeS2 nanoparticles are uniformly dispersed across the GO nanosheet, thus leading to the fine exposure of active sites, the promotion of charge transfer, and the increment of a contact surface area, which are all beneficial for a desired catalyst. In the meantime, the low-coordinated Fe atoms are activated as highly active sites, which is in favor of the enhanced electrochemical performance for the NRR. Furthermore, density functional theory (DFT) calculations illustrated that the high activity of N-2 reduction over the FeS2@GO catalyst arises from the well-exposed Fe active sites and the increment of charge density at the valence band edge. Benefiting from the well-optimized interface, the barrier of the addition of the first hydrogen atom to N-2 forming *NNH species as the potential-determining step is as low as 0.93 eV in N-2 electroreduction. The electrochemical test results reveal that, as expected, FeS2@GO exhibits high Faradaic efficiencies (4.7% in 0.1 M HCl solution and 6.8% in 0.1 M Na2SO4 solution) and advanced NH3 yields (78.6 and 27.9 mu g h(-1) mg(cat). (-1) in 0.1 M HCl and 0.1 M Na2SO4 solutions, respectively) in both acid and neutral conditions. This work offers a new avenue for exploring novel electrocatalysts, which has great promise to accelerate the practical application of the NRR.