Long-term continuous ammonia electrosynthesis.

Ammonia is crucial as a fertilizer and in the chemical industry and is considered to be a carbon-free fuel1. Ammonia electrosynthesis from nitrogen under ambient conditions offers an attractive alternative to the Haber-Bosch process2,3, and lithium-mediated nitrogen reduction represents a promising approach to continuous-flow ammonia electrosynthesis, coupling nitrogen reduction with hydrogen oxidation4. However, tetrahydrofuran, which is commonly used as a solvent, impedes long-term ammonia production owing to polymerization and volatility problems. Here we show that a chain-ether-based electrolyte enables long-term continuous ammonia synthesis. We find that a chain-ether-based solvent exhibits non-polymerization properties and a high boiling point (162 °C) and forms a compact solid-electrolyte interphase layer on the gas diffusion electrode, facilitating ammonia release in the gas phase and ensuring electrolyte stability. We demonstrate 300 h of continuous operation in a flow electrolyser with a 25 cm2 electrode at 1 bar pressure and room temperature, and achieve a current-to-ammonia efficiency of 64 ± 1% with a gas-phase ammonia content of approximately 98%. Our results highlight the crucial role of the solvent in long-term continuous ammonia synthesis.

Calcium-mediated nitrogen reduction for electrochemical ammonia synthesis.

Ammonia (NH3) is a key commodity chemical for the agricultural, textile and pharmaceutical industries, but its production via the Haber-Bosch process is carbon-intensive and centralized. Alternatively, an electrochemical method could enable decentralized, ambient NH3 production that can be paired with renewable energy. The first verified electrochemical method for NH3 synthesis was a process mediated by lithium (Li) in organic electrolytes. So far, however, elements other than Li remain unexplored in this process for potential benefits in efficiency, reaction rates, device design, abundance and stability. In our demonstration of a Li-free system, we found that calcium can mediate the reduction of nitrogen for NH3 synthesis. We verified the calcium-mediated process using a rigorous protocol and achieved an NH3 Faradaic efficiency of 40 ± 2% using calcium tetrakis(hexafluoroisopropyloxy)borate (Ca[B(hfip)4]2) as the electrolyte. Our results offer the possibility of using abundant materials for the electrochemical production of NH3, a critical chemical precursor and promising energy vector.

A rigorous electrochemical ammonia synthesis protocol with quantitative isotope measurements.

The electrochemical synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen under mild conditions using renewable electricity is an attractive alternative1-4 to the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process, which dominates industrial ammonia production. However, there are considerable scientific and technical challenges5,6 facing the electrochemical alternative, and most experimental studies reported so far have achieved only low selectivities and conversions. The amount of ammonia produced is usually so small that it cannot be firmly attributed to electrochemical nitrogen fixation7-9 rather than contamination from ammonia that is either present in air, human breath or ion-conducting membranes9, or generated from labile nitrogen-containing compounds (for example, nitrates, amines, nitrites and nitrogen oxides) that are typically present in the nitrogen gas stream10, in the atmosphere or even in the catalyst itself. Although these sources of experimental artefacts are beginning to be recognized and managed11,12, concerted efforts to develop effective electrochemical nitrogen reduction processes would benefit from benchmarking protocols for the reaction and from a standardized set of control experiments designed to identify and then eliminate or quantify the sources of contamination. Here we propose a rigorous procedure using 15N2 that enables us to reliably detect and quantify the electrochemical reduction of nitrogen to ammonia. We demonstrate experimentally the importance of various sources of contamination, and show how to remove labile nitrogen-containing compounds from the nitrogen gas as well as how to perform quantitative isotope measurements with cycling of 15N2 gas to reduce both contamination and the cost of isotope measurements. Following this protocol, we find that no ammonia is produced when using the most promising pure-metal catalysts for this reaction in aqueous media, and we successfully confirm and quantify ammonia synthesis using lithium electrodeposition in tetrahydrofuran13. The use of this rigorous protocol should help to prevent false positives from appearing in the literature, thus enabling the field to focus on viable pathways towards the practical electrochemical reduction of nitrogen to ammonia.

Author Correction: A rigorous electrochemical ammonia synthesis protocol with quantitative isotope measurements.

An Amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Characterization of adsorption sites on IrO2via temperature programmed O2 desorption simulations.

This study presents simulations of temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) profiles using desorption energy data from density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We apply this method to investigate the desorption of oxygen (O2) from IrO2(110) to gain insight into the kinetics of oxygen coupling and desorption, important elementary steps in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Initially, we confirm the thermodynamically stable adsorption site for oxygen in the pristine IrO2(110) as IrCUS, even with a high oxygen coverage. We successfully simulate TPD for O2 desorption, achieving good agreement with experimental TPD data for different initial oxygen exposures when including more than one adsorption site. We identify a new adsorption site, related to the formation of steps on IrO2(110)(IrCUS-step-0.5), that is essential for reproducing the experimental TPD. Our findings suggest that the observed TPD peaks are the result of different adsorption sites on the surface, rather than solely a lateral interactions effect. This work provides insight into the behavior of oxygen adsorption on IrO2, with implications for understanding surface reactivity and catalytic processes involving this material.

Activity And Stability of Single- And Di-Atom Catalysts for the O2 Reduction Reaction.

Efficient and inexpensive catalysts for the O2 reduction reaction (ORR) are needed for the advancement of renewable energy technologies. In this study, we designed a computational catalyst-screening method to identify single and di-atom metal dopants from first-row transition elements supported on defect-containing nitrogenated graphene surfaces for the ORR. Based on formation-energy calculations and micro-kinetic modelling of reaction pathways using intermediate binding free energies, we have identified four potentially interesting single-atom catalysts (SACs) and fifteen di-atom catalysts (DACs) with relatively high estimated catalytic activity at 0.8 V vs RHE. Among the best SACs, MnNC shows high stability in both acidic and alkaline media according to our model. For the DACs, we found four possible candidates, MnMn, FeFe, CoCo, and MnNi doped on quad-atom vacancy sites having considerable stability over a wide pH range. The remaining SACs and DACs with high activity are either less stable or show a stability region at an alkaline pH.

Analysing oxygen reduction electrocatalysis on transition metal doped niobium oxide(110).

A good oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalyst should be stable and active under electrochemical reaction conditions. Niobium pentaoxide (Nb2O5) is known to be stable under ORR conditions. However it has a large band gap, which makes conductivity a challenge during the reaction. In this work, we aim to understand if surface modification of the 110 facet of niobium pentaoxide with transition metal doping has any effect on its ORR activity and conductivity. While the problem of conductivity in the case of transition metal oxides (TMOs) can be partially rectified by transition metal doping, it has negligible influence on the ORR activity of the doped systems.

Limits to scaling relations between adsorption energies?

Linear scaling relations have led to an understanding of trends in catalytic activity and selectivity of many reactions in heterogeneous and electro-catalysis. However, linear scaling between the chemisorption energies of any two small molecule adsorbates is not guaranteed. A prominent example is the lack of scaling between the chemisorption energies of carbon and oxygen on transition metal surfaces. In this work, we show that this lack of scaling originates from different re-normalized adsorbate valence energies of lower-lying oxygen vs higher-lying carbon. We develop a model for chemisorption of small molecule adsorbates within the d-band model by combining a modified form of the Newns-Anderson hybridization energy with an effective orthogonalization term. We develop a general descriptor to a priori determine if two adsorbates are likely to scale with each other.

Progress and Perspectives of Electrochemical CO2 Reduction on Copper in Aqueous Electrolyte.

To date, copper is the only heterogeneous catalyst that has shown a propensity to produce valuable hydrocarbons and alcohols, such as ethylene and ethanol, from electrochemical CO2 reduction (CO2R). There are variety of factors that impact CO2R activity and selectivity, including the catalyst surface structure, morphology, composition, the choice of electrolyte ions and pH, and the electrochemical cell design. Many of these factors are often intertwined, which can complicate catalyst discovery and design efforts. Here we take a broad and historical view of these different aspects and their complex interplay in CO2R catalysis on Cu, with the purpose of providing new insights, critical evaluations, and guidance to the field with regard to research directions and best practices. First, we describe the various experimental probes and complementary theoretical methods that have been used to discern the mechanisms by which products are formed, and next we present our current understanding of the complex reaction networks for CO2R on Cu. We then analyze two key methods that have been used in attempts to alter the activity and selectivity of Cu: nanostructuring and the formation of bimetallic electrodes. Finally, we offer some perspectives on the future outlook for electrochemical CO2R.

Understanding Catalytic Activity Trends in the Oxygen Reduction Reaction.

Despite the dedicated search for novel catalysts for fuel cell applications, the intrinsic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity of materials has not improved significantly over the past decade. Here, we review the role of theory in understanding the ORR mechanism and highlight the descriptor-based approaches that have been used to identify catalysts with increased activity. Specifically, by showing that the performance of the commonly studied materials (e.g., metals, alloys, carbons, etc.) is limited by unfavorable scaling relationships (for binding energies of reaction intermediates), we present a number of alternative strategies that may lead to the design and discovery of more promising materials for ORR.

Effects of a conductive support on the bonding of oxygen containing molecules to transition metal oxide surfaces.

Conventional oxygen electrocatalysts are expensive for industrial use. Transition metal oxides (TMOs), as a more economical option, have emerged as an alternative to potentially replace conventional precious metal catalysts. However, many experimental studies have suggested that although a few of the TMOs supported by conductive substrates are stable under electrocatalytic conditions, their performances are far from the industrial level, especially in the acidic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). At present, their ORR and also oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performances are still not well understood. In this study, we analyze the effects of the support on ORR/OER adsorbate binding to TMO catalysts. We show that for wide bandgap TMOs (e.g., ZrO2 and HfO2), the use of a metal support leads to a marked enhancement of the adsorbate binding strengths due to a significant induced electron charge gain in the adsorbates, and a considerable up-shift in the ORR/OER adsorbate binding scaling relation. Meanwhile, these support-induced effects are significant even with relatively thick TMO layers on a thin metal substrate, requiring a large thickness cutoff to eliminate the influence. In contrast, the metal-like TMOs (e.g., PdO2 and SnO2) are less affected by the metal support. This study suggests that the thickness of the TMO layer can be used to tune the adsorption properties of electronegative adsorbates and thus provides an interesting new design option for oxygen electrocatalysis.

Micro-kinetic model of electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction over platinum in non-aqueous solvents.

The competition between the hydrogen evolution reaction and the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to multi-carbon products is a well-known challenge. In this study, we present a simple micro-kinetic model of these competing reactions over a platinum catalyst under a strong reducing potential at varying proton concentrations in a non-aqueous solvent. The model provides some insight into the mechanism of reaction and suggests that low proton concentration and a high fraction of stepped sites is likely to improve selectivity to multi-carbon products.

Efficient Pourbaix diagrams of many-element compounds.

Pourbaix diagrams have been used extensively to evaluate stability regions of materials subject to varying potential and pH conditions in aqueous environments. However, both recent advances in high-throughput material exploration and increasing complexity of materials of interest for electrochemical applications pose challenges for performing Pourbaix analysis on multidimensional systems. Specifically, current Pourbaix construction algorithms incur significant computational costs for systems consisting of four or more elemental components. Herein, we propose an alternative Pourbaix construction method that filters all potential combinations of species in a system to only those present on a compositional convex hull. By including axes representing the quantities of H+ and e- required to form a given phase, one can ensure every stable phase mixture is included in the Pourbaix diagram and reduce the computational time required to construct the resultant Pourbaix diagram by several orders of magnitude. This new Pourbaix algorithm has been incorporated into the pymatgen code and the Materials Project website, and it extends the ability to evaluate the Pourbaix stability of complex multicomponent systems.

Designing Boron Nitride Islands in Carbon Materials for Efficient Electrochemical Synthesis of Hydrogen Peroxide.

Heteroatom-doped carbons have drawn increasing research interest as catalysts for various electrochemical reactions due to their unique electronic and surface structures. In particular, co-doping of carbon with boron and nitrogen has been shown to provide significant catalytic activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). However, limited experimental work has been done to systematically study these materials, and much remains to be understood about the nature of the active site(s), particularly with regards to the factors underlying the activity enhancements of these boron-carbon-nitrogen (BCN) materials. Herein, we prepare several BCN materials experimentally with a facile and controlled synthesis method, and systematically study their electrochemical performance. We demonstrate the existence of h-BN domains embedded in the graphitic structures of these materials using X-ray spectroscopy. These synthesized structures yield higher activity and selectivity toward the 2e- ORR to H2O2 than structures with individual B or N doping. We further employ density functional theory calculations to understand the role of a variety of h-BN domains within the carbon lattice for the ORR and find that the interface between h-BN domains and graphene exhibits unique catalytic behavior that can preferentially drive the production of H2O2. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of h-BN domains in carbon identified as a novel system for the electrochemical production of H2O2.

Understanding trends in C-H bond activation in heterogeneous catalysis.

While the search for catalysts capable of directly converting methane to higher value commodity chemicals and liquid fuels has been active for over a century, a viable industrial process for selective methane activation has yet to be developed. Electronic structure calculations are playing an increasingly relevant role in this search, but large-scale materials screening efforts are hindered by computationally expensive transition state barrier calculations. The purpose of the present letter is twofold. First, we show that, for the wide range of catalysts that proceed via a radical intermediate, a unifying framework for predicting C-H activation barriers using a single universal descriptor can be established. Second, we combine this scaling approach with a thermodynamic analysis of active site formation to provide a map of methane activation rates. Our model successfully rationalizes the available empirical data and lays the foundation for future catalyst design strategies that transcend different catalyst classes.

Nature of Lone-Pair-Surface Bonds and Their Scaling Relations.

We investigate the (surface) bonding of a class of industrially and biologically important molecules in which the chemically active orbital is a 2 p electron lone pair located on an N or O atom bound via single bonds to H or alkyl groups. This class includes water, ammonia, alcohols, ethers, and amines. Using extensive density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we discover scaling relations (correlations) among molecular binding energies of different members of this class: the bonding energetics of a single member can be used as a descriptor for other members. We investigate the bonding mechanism for a representative (H2O) and find the most important physical surface properties that dictate the strength and nature of the bonding through a combination of covalent and noncovalent electrostatic effects. We describe the importance of surface intrinsic electrostatic, geometric, and mechanical properties in determining the extent of the lone-pair-surface interactions. We study systems including ionic materials in which the surface positive and negative centers create strong local surface electric fields, which polarize the dangling lone pair and lead to a strong "electrostatically driven bond". We emphasize the importance of noncovalent electrostatic effects and discuss why a fully covalent picture, common in the current first-principles literature on surface bonding of these molecules, is not adequate to correctly describe the bonding mechanism and energy trends. By pointing out a completely different mechanism (charge transfer) as the major factor for binding N- and O-containing unsaturated (radical) adsorbates, we explain why their binding energies can be tuned independently from those of the aforementioned species, having potential implications in scaling-driven catalyst discovery.

Trends in adsorption of electrocatalytic water splitting intermediates on cubic ABO3 oxides.

The reactivity of solid oxide surfaces towards adsorption of oxygen and hydrogen is a key metric for the design of new catalysts for electrochemical water splitting. In this paper, we report on trends in the adsorption energy of different adsorbed intermediates derived from the oxidation and reduction of water for ternary ABO3 oxides in the cubic perovskite structure. Our findings support a previously reported trend that rationalizes the observed lower bound in oxygen evolution (OER) overpotentials from correlations in OH* and OOH* adsorption energies. In addition, we report hydrogen adsorption energies that may be used to estimate hydrogen evolution (HER) overpotentials along with potential metrics for electrochemical metastability in reducing environments. We also report and discuss trends between atom-projected density of states and adsorption energies, which may enable a design criteria from the local electronic structure of the active site.

A theoretical study of the effect of a non-aqueous proton donor on electrochemical ammonia synthesis.

Ammonia synthesis is one of the most studied reactions in heterogeneous catalysis. To date, however, electrochemical N2 reduction in aqueous systems has proven to be extremely difficult, mainly due to the competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Recently, it has been shown that transition metal complexes based on molybdenum can reduce N2 to ammonia at room temperature and ambient pressure in a non-aqueous system, with a relatively small amount of hydrogen output. We demonstrate that the non-aqueous proton donor they have chosen, 2,6-lutidinium (LutH+), is a viable substitute for hydronium in the electrochemical process at a solid surface, since this donor can suppress the HER rate. We also show that the presence of LutH+ can selectively stabilize the *NNH intermediate relative to *NH or *NH2via the formation of hydrogen bonds, indicating that the use of non-aqueous solvents can break the scaling relationship between limiting potential and binding energies.

A Highly Active Molybdenum Phosphide Catalyst for Methanol Synthesis from CO and CO2.

Methanol is a major fuel and chemical feedstock currently produced from syngas, a CO/CO2 /H2 mixture. Herein we identify formate binding strength as a key parameter limiting the activity and stability of known catalysts for methanol synthesis in the presence of CO2 . We present a molybdenum phosphide catalyst for CO and CO2 reduction to methanol, which through a weaker interaction with formate, can improve the activity and stability of methanol synthesis catalysts in a wide range of CO/CO2 /H2 feeds.

Electrochemical Activation of CO2 through Atomic Ordering Transformations of AuCu Nanoparticles.

Precise control of elemental configurations within multimetallic nanoparticles (NPs) could enable access to functional nanomaterials with significant performance benefits. This can be achieved down to the atomic level by the disorder-to-order transformation of individual NPs. Here, by systematically controlling the ordering degree, we show that the atomic ordering transformation, applied to AuCu NPs, activates them to perform as selective electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction. In contrast to the disordered alloy NP, which is catalytically active for hydrogen evolution, ordered AuCu NPs selectively converted CO2 to CO at faradaic efficiency reaching 80%. CO formation could be achieved with a reduction in overpotential of ∼200 mV, and catalytic turnover was enhanced by 3.2-fold. In comparison to those obtained with a pure gold catalyst, mass activities could be improved as well. Atomic-level structural investigations revealed three atomic gold layers over the intermetallic core to be sufficient for enhanced catalytic behavior, which is further supported by DFT analysis.