Interface engineering of Fe3O4@MoS2 Nanocomposites: High efficiency electrocatalytic synthesis of NH3 under mild conditions

Electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (eNRR) to produce ammonia (NH3) has attracted extensive attention as a promising technology for improving the Haber-Bosch process. However, the strong stability of the nitrogen-nitrogen triple bonds and the difficulty of nitrogen adsorption still eNRR leaves with many difficulties. In this paper, interface engineering was developed by porous Fe3O4 nanospheres supported on MoS2 nanosheets (Fe3O4@MoS2) for high-efficiency eNRR process. This is mainly due to the synergistic effect of Fe and Mo, as well as the increasement in surface area and active sites caused by porous and sheets nanostructure. Specifically, at − 0.5 V vs. RHE, the Fe3O4@MoS2 exhibits excellent catalytic performance with the NH3 yield rate of 73.24 μg h−1 mg−1cat.and Faraday efficiency of 8.22%, respectively. Density functional theory calculations show that the synergistic effect of Fe3O4 and MoS2 can promote the eNRR process efficiently.