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Updated: May 29, 2026

Ammonia Synthesis at Low Pressure
Published on: August 23, 2017
Optimizing Intermediate Adsorption Through Frustrated Electron Transfer Strategy for Enhanced NO Reduction to Ammonia
Li-Bo Chen1, Tong-Hui Wang1, Qing Jiang1
1Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials, Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
Abstract:
Employing highly active electrocatalysts to convert NO to ammonia (NH3) under ambient conditions offers a valuable waste-to-wealth strategy and a more efficient complementary pathway to the industrially challenged Haber-Bosch process for NH3 synthesis, surpassing N2 electroreduction. However, highly active NO reduction reaction (NORR) electrocatalysts often face two major challenges: excessively strong NO adsorption (limited by scaling relations, hindering product desorption and active site recycling) and preferential metal-H bond formation (impeding the target reaction on active metal surfaces). Here, capitalizing on their high selectivity in suppressing the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), we systematically investigated the application of thirteen transition metal diborides (TMB2) in NORR and proposed a frustrated electron transfer strategy to optimize intermediate adsorption, thereby facilitating the desorption of the target product NH3. The results demonstrate that Pd1/FeB2, modified using this strategy, maintains high reactivity toward NO while significantly lowering the thermodynamic and kinetic energy barriers for NH3(g) formation, thus circumventing the limitation of scaling relations. This fully validates the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, offering new insights for the rational design of NORR electrocatalysts to achieve green and effective NH3 synthesis in practical applications.
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