纳米氧化铜片用于高效电化学还原一氧化氮

The removal of nitric oxide (NO) is deemed essential due to its environmental detrimental effects, and electrocatalytic NO reduction reaction (NORR) for ammonia synthesis presents a sustainable approach. In this work, we synthesized copper oxide (CuO) nanosheet catalyst with a high specific surface area and abundant defects. This catalyst exhibited a remarkable 92.1% ammonia Faradaic efficiency (FE) in a flow cell, accompanied by a current density of 1.1 A cm−2 and an ammonia production rate of 7356 µmol cm−2 h−1 at −0.26 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode. The FE of ammonia remained above 80% during stability test for 50 h at a current density of more than 400 mA cm−2. Quasi in situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy revealed that the CuO nanosheets were electrochemically reduced to monomeric copper during NORR. Compared with Cu nanoparticles, the CuO nanosheets showed a high electrochemical surface area and high intrinsic activity for NORR.