Molecular Imprinting Technology Enables Proactive Capture of Nitrogen for Boosted Ammonia Synthesis under Ambient Conditions

Abstract

Electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) is a burgeoning field for green and sustainable ammonia production, in which numerous potential catalysts emerge in endless. However, satisfactory performances are still not realized under practical applications due to the limited solubility and sluggish diffusion of nitrogen at the interface. Herein, molecularly imprinting technology is adopted to construct an adlayer with abundant nitrogen imprints on the electrocatalyst, which is capable to selectively recognize and proactively aggregate high‐concentrated nitrogen at the interface while hindering the access of overwhelming water simultaneously. With this favourable microenvironment, nitrogen could preferentially occupy the active surface, and the NRR equilibrium could be positively shifted to facilitate the reaction kinetics. Approximately threefold improvements in both ammonia production rate (185.7 µg h−1 mg−1) and Faradaic efficiency (72.9%) are achieved by a metal‐free catalyst compared with the bare one. We believe that the molecularly imprinting strategy should be a general method to find further applicability in numerous catalysts or even other reactions facing similar challenges.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

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