NO Electroreduction by Transition Metal Dichalcogenides with Chalcogen Vacancies
Mamutjan Tursun, Chao Wu
Abstract
Abstract Nitric oxide electroreduction reaction (NOER) is one of the most attractive routes for ammonia synthesis and NO x ‐related pollutant treatment. However, current research on NOER catalysts mainly focus on noble metals and single atom catalysts, while low‐cost transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are rarely considered, let alone their product selectivity. Herein, using first‐principles calculations, we systematically investigate the performance of a series of single‐layer TMDs (MoS 2 , MoSe 2 , MoTe 2 , TaTe 2 and WTe 2 ) in the 1T’ phase as electrocatalysts for NOER. Our results reveal that defective 1T’‐MoS 2 and 1T’‐MoSe 2 monolayers (with the most common sulphur and selenium vacancies, respectively) exhibit excellent activity for NOER as well as high selectivity for ammonia, which can be correspondingly yielded at 0 and −0.06 V potentials, comparable to the best Pt‐based and single atom catalysts. Furthermore, these two catalysts efficiently suppress the competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Thus, single‐layer TMDs synthesized with chalcogen vacancies may serve as efficient catalysts for electrochemical ammonia synthesis from pollutants and electrocatalytic denitrification.