Water increases Faradaic selectivity of Li-mediated nitrogen reduction.

12 December 2022, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

The lithium-mediated system catalyses nitrogen to ammonia under ambient conditions. Herein we discover that trace amount of water - in contrast to prior reports from the literature – can effect a dramatic improvement in the Faradaic selectivity of N2 reduction to NH3. We report an optimal water concentration of 35.5 mM and LiClO4 salt concentration of 0.8 M allows a Faradaic efficiency up to 27.7% at ambient pressure. We attribute the increase in Faradaic efficiency to the incorporation of Li2O in the solid electrolyte interphase, as suggested by our X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements. Our results highlight the extreme sensitivity of lithium mediated N2 reduction to small changes in the experimental conditions.

Keywords

Nitrogen reduction
ammonia
lithium-mediated
electrochemical ammonia synthesis

Supplementary materials

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Description
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Title
Water increases Faradaic selectivity of Li-mediated nitrogen reduction - Supporting Information
Description
Supporting Information available: Materials, ammonia quantification, water concentration measurements, working electrode stability, experiments list, XPS measurements.
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