Plasma synthesis of ammonia was studied at atmospheric pressure using a dielectric-barrier-discharge-plasma reactor equipped with a metal-loaded membrane-like alumina tube as a catalyst between the electrodes. Introducing the pure alumina into N 2 -H 2 plasma resulted in an increase in the ammonia yield and the further improvement was achieved by loading the alumina with Ru, Pt, Ni, and Fe. These results clearly demonstrate the catalytic effects of the alumina and the metals in the plasma reaction. Temperature-programmed desorption and isotope exchange reaction of nitrogen revealed that plasma-excited N 2 molecules were subjected to dissociative adsorptions mainly on the alumina to form atomic N(a) (The suffix ''(a)'' denotes adsorbed species) species, which were converted into ammonia by H 2 plasma. A role of the metals is considered to be acceleration of ammonia formation by the reaction of the alumina-adsorbed N(a) atoms with plasma-activated hydrogen species.

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A AgBr/SiO 2 catalyst prepared from Schumann emulsion has been used for photolysis of CH 3 OH/H 2 O solution. Under UV illumination, H 2 generation was observed and hydrogen was continuously evolved for 200 h without destruction of AgBr although Ag 0 was detected by X-ray diffraction analysis after the reaction. It is presumed that the hydrogen production from methanol in distilled water occurs on the Ag 0 and the support plays important roles for the photocatalysis as well as TiO 2 /SiO 2 (J.

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