Microfluidic platform serves as controllable fabrication of binary Mo/Ir nanodots/carbon hetero-material for efficient electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction

Electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) is regarded as a potential routine to achieve environment-friendly ammonia production, because of its abundant nitrogen resources, clean energy utilization and flexible operation. However, it is hindered by low activity and selectivity, in which condition well-designed catalysts are urgently in need. In this work, a binary Mo/Ir nanodots/carbon (Mo/Ir/C) hetero-material is efficiently constructed via microfluidic strategy, of which the nanodots are homogeneously distributed on the carbon skeleton and the average size is approximately 1 nm. Excellent performance for NRR is obtained in 1 mol L–1 KOH, of which the optimized ammonia yield and faradic efficiency are 7.27 μg h–1 cm–2 and 2.31% respectively. Moreover, the optimized ammonia yield of 6.20 μg h–1 cm–2 and faradic efficiency of 10.59% are also obtained in 0.005 mol L–1 H2SO4. This work achieves the continuous-flow synthesis and controllable adjustment of hetero-materials for favorable morphologies, which provides an innovative pathway for catalyst design and further promotes the development of ammonia production field.