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Construction of Fe 3 O 4 @Au catalysts via the surface functional group effect of ferric oxide for efficient electrocatalytic nitrite reduction.

Wei ZhangJin LiCuilian SunXiujing XingYaokang LvWei XiongHao Li
Published in: Dalton transactions (Cambridge, England : 2003) (2024)
Surface modification is one of the effective strategies to control the morphology and electrocatalytic performance of noble metal/transition metal oxide matrix composite catalysts. In this work, we successfully introduced modification groups such as -NH 2 , -COOH, and -SH on the surface of Fe 3 O 4 using the hydrothermal method. It was found that when the modification group -COOH was introduced, the regular spherical morphology of Fe 3 O 4 was still maintained in Fe 3 O 4 -COOH, while Fe 3 O 4 -COOH had a relatively smaller spherical particle size (≈155.9 nm). Due to its smaller particle size, Fe 3 O 4 -COOH has a larger active area than Fe 3 O 4 , exposing more active sites. The abundant active sites in Fe 3 O 4 -COOH provide more nucleation and growth sites for Au particles, which is beneficial for the recombination between Fe 3 O 4 -COOH and Au. In addition, the experimental results of exploring the effect of Au precursor dosage on the synthesis of the Fe 3 O 4 -COOH@Au structure and performance show that the synthesized Fe 3 O 4 -COOH@Au 1.0 catalyst has higher electrocatalytic activity. Due to the larger electrochemically active surface area of the Fe 3 O 4 -COOH@Au 1.0 catalyst compared to those of Fe 3 O 4 -COOH@Au 0.5 and Fe 3 O 4 -COOH@Au 1.5 catalysts, the adsorption and activation of NO 2 - reactants were accelerated, thereby improving the electrocatalytic performance. Therefore, owing to the morphological and structural characteristics of Fe 3 O 4 -COOH combined with the high activity of Au nanoparticles, the synthesized Fe 3 O 4 -COOH@Au exhibits effective electrocatalytic activity in the electrocatalytic NO 2 - RR synthesis of ammonia. At a voltage of -0.8 V ( vs. RHE), the ammonia yield reached 2092.8 μg h -1 mg cat -1 and Faraday efficiency reached 81.2%. The findings of this work will enrich our understanding of the construction of efficient Fe 3 O 4 @Au catalysts based on surface functionalization and help to design efficient electrocatalytic NO 2 - RR catalysts for practical applications.
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