Atomic-Scale Homogeneous RuCu Alloy Nanoparticles for Highly Efficient Electrocatalytic Nitrogen Reduction
Chansol Kim1,2, Ji-Yoon Song1,3, Changhyeok Choi4
1KAIST-UCB-VNU Global Climate Change Research Center, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering (BK-21 plus), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 34141, Korea.
Abstract:
Ruthenium (Ru) is the most widely used metal as an electrocatalyst for nitrogen (N2 ) reduction reaction (NRR) because of the relatively high N2 adsorption strength for successive reaction. Recently, it has been well reported that the homogeneous Ru-based metal alloys such as RuRh, RuPt, and RuCo significantly enhance the selectivity and formation rate of ammonia (NH3 ). However, the metal combinations for NRR have been limited to several miscible combinations of metals with Ru, although various immiscible combinations have immense potential to show high NRR performance. In this study, an immiscible combination of Ru and copper (Cu) is first utilized, and homogeneous alloy nanoparticles (RuCu NPs) are fabricated by the carbothermal shock method. The RuCu homogeneous NP alloys on cellulose/carbon nanotube sponge exhibit the highest selectivity and NH3 formation rate of ≈31% and -73 μmol h-1 cm-2 , respectively. These are the highest values of the selectivity and NH3 formation rates among existing Ru-based alloy metal combinations.
