Spontaneous Atomic Ruthenium Doping in Mo2CTX MXene Defects Enhances Electrocatalytic Activity for the Nitrogen Reduction Reaction

Abstract

The electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) process usually suffers extremely low Faradaic efficiency and ammonia yields due to sluggish NN dissociation. Herein, single‐atomic ruthenium modified Mo 2 CTX MXene nanosheets as an efficient electrocatalyst for nitrogen fixation at ambient conditions are reported. The catalyst achieves a Faradaic efficiency of 25.77% and ammonia yield rate of 40.57 µg h−1 mg−1 at ‐0.3 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode in 0.5 m K 2 SO 4 solution. Operando X‐ray absorption spectroscopy studies and density functional theory calculations reveal that single‐atomic Ru anchored on MXene nanosheets act as important electron back‐donation centers for N 2 activation, which can not only promote nitrogen adsorption and activation behavior of the catalyst, but also lower the thermodynamic energy barrier of the first hydrogenation step. This work opens up a promising avenue to manipulate catalytic performance of electrocatalysts utilizing an atomic‐level engineering strategy.