The Preparation of UiO‐66‐NH2/CNT Electrocatalyst and its High Catalytic Performance for Electrochemical Synthetic Ammonia in Neutral Electrolyte

Abstract The electrochemical synthesis of ammonia is a sustainable green ammonia synthesis technology. The core reaction involved in this process‐the nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) is a slow kinetic reaction, which requires efficient catalysts to improve the ammonia yield rate. A series of UiO‐66‐NH 2 /CNT‐X (X=0.05, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20 g) electrocatalysts with different carbon nanotube (CNT) content were synthesized by hydrothermal method. UiO‐66‐NH 2 /CNT‐0.15 with appropriate CNT content has the highest NH 3 yield of 1.85×10 −10 mol cm −2 s −1 (22.644 μg h −1 mg cat −1 ) at −0.3 V (vs. RHE), and the Faradaic efficiency (FE) is 37.78 %. The main reason is that the conductivity of CNT improves the charge transfer efficiency and ensures the effective electron conduction path of the catalyst. Besides, CNT in UiO‐66‐NH 2 /CNT‐X composite material inhibits the aggregation of UiO‐66‐NH 2 particles, exposes more active sites and reduces the particle size of UiO‐66‐NH 2 . So, the synergistic effect between UiO‐66‐NH 2 particles and CNT improves the ammonia yield.