Sn‐Doped Black Phosphorene for Enhancing the Selectivity of Nitrogen Electroreduction to Ammonia
Honghong Liu, Xinrui Cao, Liang‐Xin Ding, Haihui Wang
Abstract
Abstract The electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) to ammonia (NH 3 ) is a highly desirable yet challenging objective because of the competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, a novel electrocatalyst of Sn‐doped black phosphorene (Sn‐BP ene ) is demonstrated with dramatically improved selectivity for the NRR. The Sn that is added acts as a sacrificial species for the HER to protect the NRR active sites on black phosphorene (BP ene ). The Sn‐BP ene achieves a Faraday efficiency of up to 36.51% and a prominent NH 3 yield rate of 26.98 µg h –1 mg cat –1 at a relatively low overpotential. Density functional theory calculations prove that the adsorption sites of H 2 O and N 2 are separated after doping with Sn, with H 2 O adsorbing preferentially onto the Sn sites and N 2 onto the NRR active sites of BP ene , leading to high selectivity.