Promotion of electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction on N-doped porous carbon with secondary heteroatoms

Abstract The synergistic effect among dual heteroatoms-doped carbons leads to significantly enhanced electrochemical performance. Herein, with N as the primary dopant, B, F, P, and S as the secondary heteroatoms are introduced into porous carbons respectively to investigate their electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) performance. The promoting effect of B, F, P, and S to N-doped carbons for NRR is different from the experimental evolution and analysis. In there, N,B-codoping of porous carbon has the greatest promotional effect in NRR. The electronic structure of these doped carbons determines the electrocatalytic activity. For instance, with the presence of B dopant, the fabricated N-doped materials exhibit a higher content of pyridinic-N. Further systematic and controlled experiments demonstrate that the presence of B element facilitates the formation of B–N bonds, thus boosting NRR activity. From in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic findings, this N,B dual-doped carbons follow the associative mechanism during NRR process.