Near-Unity Nitrate to Ammonia conversion via reactant enrichment at the solid-liquid interface
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Electroreduction of nitrate (NO3‒) to ammonia (NH3) is a promising approach for addressing energy challenges. However, the activity is limited by NO3‒ mass transfer, particularly at reduction potential, where an abundance of electrons on the cathode surface repels NO3‒ from the inner Helmholtz plane (IHP). This constraint becomes pronounced as NO3‒ concentration decreases, impeding practical applications in the conversion of NO3‒-to-NH3. Herein, we propose a generic strategy of catalyst bandstructure engineering for the enrichment of negatively charged ions through solid-liquid (S-L) junction-mediated charge rearrangement within IHP. Specifically, during NO3‒ reduction, the formation of S-L junction induces hole transfer from Ag-doped MoS2 (Ag-MoS2) to electrode/electrolyte interface, triggering abundant positive charges on the IHP to attract NO3‒. Thus, Ag-MoS2 exhibits a ~ 28.6-fold NO3‒ concentration in the IHP than the counterpart without junction, and achieves near-100% NH3 Faradaic efficiency with an NH3 yield rate of ~20 mg h‒1 cm‒2 under ultralow NO3‒ concentrations.
Date Issued
2025-07-01
Date Acceptance
2025-06-02
Citation
Nature Communications, 2025, 16
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
16
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
5715
Date Publish Online
2025-07-01