Sulfur‐Vacancy Defective MoS<sub>2</sub> as a Promising Electrocatalyst for Nitrogen Reduction Reaction under Mild Conditions
Bingping Liu, Chaoqun Ma, Da Liu, Shihai Yan
Abstract
Abstract Developing low‐cost and efficient nanomaterials to transform nitrogen to ammonia under mild conditions is an attractive topic in chemistry and is significant for sustaining agriculture and life. In this work, the catalytic performance of three types of MoS 2 electrocatalysts is systematically investigated. The density of states shows noticeable improvement in the electrical conductivity for sulfur‐vacancy defective MoS 2 (V S ‐MoS 2 ) than that of pure MoS 2 , as it facilitates the following electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR). V S ‐MoS 2 possesses excellent NRR catalytic performance with a limiting potential of −0.48 V, an outstanding NH 3 average yield of 29.55 μg h −1 mg cat. −1 at −0.5 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), and a high faraday efficiency of 4.58 % at −0.3 V vs RHE. The hydrogenation of *N‐NH to *NH‐NH is the rate determining step of the enzymatic mechanism. These results demonstrate the feasibility of V S ‐MoS 2 for electrocatalytic ammonia synthesis.