Design of material regulatory mechanism for electrocatalytic converting NO/NO3− to NH3 progress

Abstract

Abstract Nitric oxide (NO)/nitrate (NO3−) exists as the most hazardous pollutions in the air/water that severely impacts human health. Conventional disposing methods are energy‐consuming and uneconomic. Moreover, ammonia (NH3) fertilizer resources acquire urgent, eco‐friendly, and economical strategies that can remove NO/NO3− pollution and simultaneously convert nitrate species, maintaining nitrogen balance. Electrochemical nitrogen (N) reduction is attracting more attention, particularly electrocatalytic NO/NO3− reduction (ENR) to ammonia supply an approach to fixed nitrogen and generate ammonia. ENR is capable of achieving high NH3 yield and Faradaic efficiency (FE), avoiding competitive hydrogen evolution reactions and easily overcoming strong N≡N triple bond (941 kJ mol−1). There are abundant research studies related to ENR for decreasing hazardous NO/NO3− and supplying profitable NH3. In this review, we discuss different electrocatalytic regulations for crystalline facet engineering, heteroatom doping, heterostructure, surface vacancy engineering, and single‐atom structure, which bring various metal/nonmetal and their combined catalysts to the preferable performance, such as reactivity, selectivity, FE, and stability. Finally, we summarize the challenges and provide the perspectives to promote the industrial application of ENR. Key Points This review focusing on systematically introduce the different modification strategies and regulatory mechanism to enhance the electrochemical performance for NORR/NO3RR, including crystalline facet engineering, heteroatom doping, heterostructure, surface vacancy engineering, and single atom structure.

Keywords

• ammonia synthesis
• electrocatalysis
• nitrate
• nitric oxide
• regulatory mechanism