Ternary AuPS Alloy Mesoporous Film for Efficient Electroreduction of Nitrogen to Ammonia

摘要

Electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction is a promising strategy to produce ammonia with low energy consumption and an ambient operation condition. Owing to extreme difficulties in nitrogen activation, the design of high-efficiency electrocatalysts is still a great challenge. This work proposes a versatile electrodeposition strategy to construct P, S-codoped Au mesoporous film on carbon paper (mAuPS/CP) using polystyrene-b -poly (ethylene oxide) micelles as surfactants. The continuous mesoporous structure and nonmetal element doping can change the electronic structure and provide sufficient active sites, leading to enhanced N_(2) adsorption and reduced hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) process. Expectedly, the mAuPS/CP exhibits superior performance [NH_(3) yield: 58.2 μg h~(–1) mg~(–1)_(cat.); Faradaic efficiency (FE): 25.7%] to the counterpart without doping in a neutral electrolyte. This research offers an ingenious method to directly synthesize P, S-codoped mesoporous noble metals for effective ammonia electrosynthesis.