Magneto‐Electrochemical Ammonia Synthesis: Boosting Nitrite Reduction Activity by the Optimized Magnetic Field Induced Spin Polarized System
Ashadul Adalder, Koushik Mitra, Narad Barman, Ranjit Thapa, S. Bhowmick, Uttam Kumar Ghorai
Abstract
Abstract Using low and optimized magnetic field along with electric field is a novel strategy to facilitate electrochemical nitrite reduction reaction (NO 2 RR). Herein, the magnetic field assisted electrocatalytic ammonia synthesis employing spin‐thrusted β‐MnPc at 95 mT magnetic field is explored. The calculated rate of ammonia generation is 16603.4 µg h −1 mg cat −1 , which is almost twice that of the nonpolarized manganese phthalocyanine (MnPc) catalyst. Additionally, the Faradaic efficiency (FE) at –0.9 V versus RHE is found to be 92.9%, significantly higher compared to the nonpolarized MnPc catalyst. In presence of external magnetic field, MnPc catalysts provide a better electron transfer channel which results in a lower charge transfer resistance and hence better electrochemical performances. Density functional theory (DFT) result further verifies that magnetic field induced β‐MnPc has a lower potential barrier (0.51 eV) for the protonation of NO* than nonpolarized β‐MnPc (1.08 eV), which confirms the enhanced electrochemical nitrite reduction to ammonia.