Enhancing Electrochemical Nitrogen Reduction of Ru Nanowire by Atomic Decoration of Pt

Achieving efficient electrochemical nitrogen reduction (ENRR) remains as a great challenge. Therefore, it is demanded to develop new strategy for ENRR catalyst engineering. Herein, we demonstrate largely improved ENRR by controllably engineering Ru nanowires with atomic decoration of Pt. Specifically, the readily synthesized Ru88Pt12 nanowire exhibits a high NH3 production rate of 47.1 μg h-1 mgcat-1 and Faradaic efficiency of 8.9% at -0.2 V, which are 5.3 and 14.6 times higher than those from Ru nanowire. And it shows outstanding stability as evidenced by full preservation in the NH3 yield and Faradaic efficiency even after 15 h electrocatalysis. As revealed by the theoretical investigation, d-band center of Ru atom is upshifted by the tensile strain due to the presence of Pt atoms, leading to selective enhancement of N2 adsorption and stabilization of N2H*. Such atomic engineering method may be applied to precisely tailor other metal nanocatalysts for different applications.