General synthesis of high-entropy single-atom nanocages for electrosynthesis of ammonia from nitrate

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-51112-3
• Publication Date: 2024-08-13T13:03:01Z
• Authors: Sishuang Tang; Minghao Xie; Saerom Yu; Xun Zhan; Ruilin Wei; Maoyu Wang; Weixin Guan; Bowen Zhang; Yuyang Wang; Hua Zhou; Gengfeng Zheng; Yuanyue Liu; Jamie H. Warner; Guihua Yu
• Keywords: Ammonia production; Nanocages; Thermochemical cycle

Given the growing emphasis on energy efficiency, environmental sustainability, and agricultural demand, there's a pressing need for decentralized scalable ammonia production. Converting nitrate ions electrochemically, which are commonly found in industrial wastewater polluted groundwater, into offers viable approach both treatment production yet limited by low producibility scalability. Here we report versatile solution-phase synthesis of high-entropy single-atom nanocages (HESA NCs) Fe other five metals-Co, Cu, Zn, Cd, In-are isolated via cyano-bridges coordinated with C N, respectively. Incorporating isolating metals matrix resulted Fe-C5 active sites minimized symmetry lattice as well facilitated water dissociation thus hydrogenation process. As result, Fe-HESA NCs exhibited high selectivity toward NH3 from electrocatalytic reduction Faradaic efficiency 93.4% while maintaining yield rate 81.4 mg h−1 mg−1. waste sources provides an effective method authors nanocage catalysts efficient nitrate-to-ammonia conversion.