Heterogenous Cu@ZrO 2 nanofibers enable efficient electrocatalytic nitrate reduction to ammonia under ambient conditions.

In this study, we construct a Cu@ZrO 2 heterogenous structure as a new catalyst that achieves a large NH 3 yield of 15.4 mg h -1 mg -1 cat . and a high faradaic efficiency of 67.6% at -0.7 V vs. RHE in 0.1 M PBS with 0.1 M NaNO 3 , and it also shows excellent electrochemical durability and structural stability. Theoretical calculations reveal an extremely low adsorption energy of -1.54 eV at Cu surfaces and Cu can significantly reduce the applied overpotential and correspondingly promote the catalytic activity.