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Updated: Jan 24, 2026

Ammonia Synthesis at Low Pressure
Published on: August 23, 2017
Generating Defect-Rich Bismuth for Enhancing the Rate of Nitrogen Electroreduction to Ammonia
Yue Wang1, Miao-Miao Shi1, Di Bao2
1Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials, Ministry of Education and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, Jilin, P. R. China.
Abstract:
The electrochemical N2 fixation, which is far from practical application in aqueous solution under ambient conditions, is extremely challenging and requires a rational design of electrocatalytic centers. We observed that bismuth (Bi) might be a promising candidate for this task because of its weak binding with H adatoms, which increases the selectivity and production rate. Furthermore, we successfully synthesized defect-rich Bi nanoplates as an efficient noble-metal-free N2 reduction electrocatalyst via a low-temperature plasma bombardment approach. When exclusively using 1 H NMR measurements with N2 gas as a quantitative testing method, the defect-rich Bi(110) nanoplates achieved a 15 NH3 production rate of 5.453 μg mgBi -1 h-1 and a Faradaic efficiency of 11.68 % at -0.6 V vs. RHE in aqueous solution at ambient conditions.
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