摘要
Electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) to generate ammonium is a promising renewable technology for nitrogen cycling. Engineering the composition and surface states of an electrocatalyst is critical to improve the intrinsic NRR performance. Here, a facile preparation of Ni nanoparticles (NPs) loaded on V4C3Tx MXene (denoted as Ni@MX) as a highly efficient NRR electrocatalyst is reported. Remarkably, the Ni@MX nanocomposite presents an ammonia yield rate of 21.29 µg h-1 mgcat-1 at 0.2 mA cm-2. The presented NRR activity is considerably higher than that of the recently reported MXene derivatives and is even comparable to that of the noble-metal-based electrocatalysts. Combined with various characterization methods and the density functional theory (DFT) simulation, we propose that the improved NRR activity was ascribed to a synergistic NRR route by Ni sites in the nanoparticles and the surface O vacancy of V4C3Tx MXene. Given the remarkable improvement of NRR activity on the MXene-based nanocomposites, this work demonstrates the critical role of MXene and its derivatives with surface modification as electrocatalysts.
源语言 | 英语 |
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页(从-至) | 2338-2346 |
页数 | 9 |
期刊 | Materials Chemistry Frontiers |
卷 | 5 |
期 | 5 |
DOI | |
出版状态 | 已出版 - 7 3月 2021 |