Interfacial Microextraction Boosting Nitrogen Feed for Efficient Ambient Ammonia Synthesis in Aqueous Electrolyte
Xiaowei Shen, Sisi Liu, Xinyao Xia, Mengfan Wang, Haoqing Ji, Zhenkang Wang, Jie Liu, Xinsong Zhang, Chenglin Yan, Tao Qian
Abstract
Abstract The extremely low nitrogen (N 2 ) solubility in aqueous solution greatly limits the gas reactant supply to catalysts resulting in a bottleneck in establishing efficient electrocatalytic N 2 reduction reaction (NRR). Here, aiming at fairly few N 2 dissolving in aqueous electrolyte, an N 2 ‐microextractor (NME) that can extract the N 2 from water, then feed it to catalysts on electrodes, is reported. The NME consists of polymer framework and extractant that possess high solubility for N 2 , which serves as an ultra‐thin interfacial system wrapping around electrodes. As expected, the enhancement of N 2 supply in NRR leads to a record‐high Faradaic efficiency (80.1%) with an ammonia yield rate of 58.3 µg h −1 mg −1 under ambient conditions. This is of great significance to a sustainable “Ammonia Economy.”