Bionic Design of Iron-Doped MoSe 2 Catalyst for Efficient Nitrogen Fixation.

The catalytic system of biological nitrogen fixation in nature primarily relies on the "FeMo cofactor" within nitrogenase enzymes. Inspired by this natural structure, we have designed a bionic inorganic counterpart, iron-doped MoSe 2 , for the efficient electroreduction of dinitrogen to ammonia. The introduced Fe dopant significantly enhances nitrogen fixation activity of MoSe 2 . Furthermore, we constructed a heterostructure catalyst, the Fe-MoSe 2 /Mo 2 C with more versatile Mo valence states. The heterostructured electrocatalyst achieves an ammonia production rate of 3.38 μg cm -2  h -1 , and a Faradaic efficiency of 30.8 %, which is ~5 fold higher than that of pristine MoSe 2 . This study presents a novel approach for designing bionic nitrogen fixation electrocatalysts.