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Updated: Feb 7, 2026

Preparation of Carbon Nanosheets at Room Temperature
Published on: March 8, 2016
Fe-doped CuO embedded in carbon nanosheets for efficient and selective nitrate electroreduction to ammonia
Jinjie Lin1, Nan Wu1, Xianhong Wu1
1Liaoning Key Lab of Lignocellulose Chemistry and BioMaterials, Liaoning Collaborative Innovation Center for Lignocellulosic Biorefinery, College of Light Industry and Chemical Engineering, Dalian Polytechnic University, Dalian 116034, China. wuxianhong@dlpu.edu.cn.
None:
The nitrate electroreduction reaction (NO3-RR) provides a low-carbon and environmentally friendly strategy for ammonia production. Here, a sustainable method for synthesizing carbon nanosheets is developed by assembling biomass molecules on a boric acid template, followed by thermal annealing. During this process, the introduction of Fe3+ and Cu2+ ions enables the formation of Fe-doped CuO nanoparticles embedded in carbon nanosheets (Fe-CuO/C). The Fe-CuO/C shows high activity for the NO3-RR resulting in a low potential of 0.089 and -0.192 V vs. RHE at -10 and -50 mA cm-2, with high ammonia yield and faraday efficiency. Theoretical calculations indicate that the *NO to *NOH step is the rate-determining step during the NO3-RR. The doping of Fe effectively reduces the energy barrier of this step.
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