Interfacial Microextraction Boosting Nitrogen Feed for Efficient Ambient Ammonia Synthesis in Aqueous Electrolyte

Abstract

Abstract The extremely low nitrogen (N 2 ) solubility in aqueous solution greatly limits the gas reactant supply to catalysts resulting in a bottleneck in establishing efficient electrocatalytic N 2 reduction reaction (NRR). Here, aiming at fairly few N 2 dissolving in aqueous electrolyte, an N 2 ‐microextractor (NME) that can extract the N 2 from water, then feed it to catalysts on electrodes, is reported. The NME consists of polymer framework and extractant that possess high solubility for N 2 , which serves as an ultra‐thin interfacial system wrapping around electrodes. As expected, the enhancement of N 2 supply in NRR leads to a record‐high Faradaic efficiency (80.1%) with an ammonia yield rate of 58.3 µg h −1 mg −1 under ambient conditions. This is of great significance to a sustainable “Ammonia Economy.”