Regulating Interfacial Microenvironment in Aqueous Electrolyte via a N 2 Filtering Membrane for Efficient Electrochemical Ammonia Synthesis.

Electrochemical synthesis of ammonia (NH 3 ) in aqueous electrolyte has long been suffered from poor nitrogen (N 2 ) supply owing to its low solubility and sluggish diffusion kinetics. Therefore, creating a N 2 rich microenvironment around catalyst surface may potentially improve the efficiency of nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR). Herein, a delicately designed N 2 filtering membrane consisted of polydimethylsiloxane is covered on catalyst surface via superspreading. Because this membrane let the dissolved N 2 molecules be accessible to the catalyst but block excess water, the designed N 2 rich microenvironment over catalyst leads to an optimized Faradaic efficiency of 39.4% and an NH 3 yield rate of 109.2 µg h -1  mg -1 , which is superior to those of the most report metal-based catalysts for electrochemical NRR. This study offers alternative strategy for enhancing NRR performance.