Activities per year
Abstract
Electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) is a sustainable alternative to the Haber‒Bosch process for ammonia (NH3) production. However, the significant uphill energy in the multistep NRR pathway is a bottleneck for favorable serial reactions. To overcome this challenge, we designed a vanadium oxide/nitride (V2O3/VN) hybrid electrocatalyst in which V2O3 and VN coexist coherently at the heterogeneous interface. Since single-phase V2O3 and VN exhibit different surface catalytic kinetics for NRR, the V2O3/VN hybrid electrocatalyst can provide alternating reaction pathways, selecting a lower energy pathway for each material in the serial NRR pathway. As a result, the ammonia yield of the V2O3/VN hybrid electrocatalyst was 219.6 µg h−1 cm−2, and the Faradaic efficiency was 18.9%, which is much higher than that of single-phase VN, V2O3, and VNxOy solid solution catalysts without heterointerfaces. Density functional theory calculations confirmed that the composition of these hybrid electrocatalysts allows NRR to proceed from a multistep reduction reaction to a low-energy reaction pathway through the migration and adsorption of intermediate species. Therefore, the design of metal oxide/nitride hybrids with coherent heterointerfaces provides a novel strategy for synthesizing highly efficient electrochemical catalysts that induce steps favorable for the efficient low-energy progression of NRR.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e226 |
Journal | SusMat |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Aug 2024 |
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Dive into the research topics of 'V2O3/VN electrocatalysts with coherent heterogeneous interfaces for selecting low-energy nitrogen reduction pathways'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Activities
- 1 Presentation at conference/workshop/seminar
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Theory of photochemical and catalytic reactions on wide band gap semiconductors
Heechae Choi (Invited speaker)
28 Nov 2024 → 30 Nov 2024Activity: Talk or presentation › Presentation at conference/workshop/seminar