A Plasmon Resonance Enhanced Photo‐Electrode to Promote NH3 Yield in Sustainable N2 Conversion

A key challenge for electrochemical nitrogen reduction reactions (NRR) is the difficulty for conventional catalysts to achieve high currents at low H* coverage to produce appreciable NH3. Herein, we specially designed an Au nanoparticle‐embedded ZnSe photo‐electrode to solve the problem. As‐designed...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Chemistry : a European journal 2023-05, Vol.29 (25), p.e202300204-n/a
Main Authors: Wang, Haonan, Cheng, Chuanqi, Du, Kun, Xu, Zongwei, Zhao, Erling, Lan, Ning, Yin, Peng‐Fei, Ling, Tao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ammonia
Catalysts
Chemical reactions
Chemical reduction
Chemistry
Electrochemistry
Electrodes
Gold
hydrogen coverage
Nanoparticles
photo-excited carriers
photoelectrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction
plasmon resonance effect
Plasmons
Resonance
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A key challenge for electrochemical nitrogen reduction reactions (NRR) is the difficulty for conventional catalysts to achieve high currents at low H* coverage to produce appreciable NH3. Herein, we specially designed an Au nanoparticle‐embedded ZnSe photo‐electrode to solve the problem. As‐designed photo‐electrode achieves excellent NRR performance with a high NH3 yield (12.2 μg cm−2 h−1) and Faradaic efficiency (27.3 %). Our work reveals that the unique plasmon resonance effect of embedded Au nanoparticles plays a key role in increasing catalytic current when the H* coverage is decreased. Moreover, we successfully established a correlation between H* coverage and NRR performance based on theoretical calculations and experimental observations. This work paves the path for the future design of catalytic materials to overcome the selectivity and yield challenge of sustainable NH3 production. A strategy is proposed to address current NH3 yield challenge of NRR by achieving low H* coverages at appreciable current densities based on the unique SPR effect and established a correlation between H* coverage and NRR performance. The specifically designed ZnSe(Au) electrode achieves a high FE and NH3 yield rate of 27.3 % and 12.2 μg cm−2 h−1, respectively.
ISSN:0947-6539
1521-3765
DOI:10.1002/chem.202300204