%0 Journal Article
%T Interface Engineering of the Cu1.5Mn1.5O4/CeO2 Heterostructure for Highly Efficient Electrocatalytic Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia.
%A Qi R
%A Zhang L
%A Ren S
%A Shi B
%A Zhong M
%A Chen ZJ
%A Lu X
%J Nano Lett
%V 24
%N 29
%D 2024 Jul 24
%M 38985521
%F 12.262
%R 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c01904
%X The electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR) is considered a sustainable technology to convert the nitrate pollutants to ammonia. However, developing highly efficient electrocatalysts is necessary and challenging given the slow kinetics of the NO3RR with an eight-electron transfer process. Here, a Cu1.5Mn1.5O4 (CMO)/CeO2 heterostructure with rich interfaces is designed and fabricated through an electrospinning and postprocessing technique. Benefiting from the strong coupling between CMO and CeO2, the optimized CMO/CeO2-2 catalyst presents excellent NO3RR performance, with NH3 Faraday efficiency (FE) up to 93.07 ± 1.45% at -0.481 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) and NH3 yield rate up to 48.06 ± 1.32 mg cm-2 h-1 at -0.681 V vs RHE. Theoretical calculations demonstrate that the integration of CeO2 with CMO modulates the adsorption/desorption process of the reactants and intermediates, showing a reduced energy barrier in the rate determination step of NO* to N* and achieving an outstanding NO3RR performance.