Bionic Design of Iron-Doped MoSe2 Catalyst for Efficient Nitrogen Fixation.

Abstract

The catalytic system of biological nitrogen fixation in nature primarily relies on the "MoFe cofactor" within nitrogenase enzymes. Inspired by this natural organic structure, we have designed a bionic inorganic counterpart, iron doped MoSe2, for the efficient electroreduction of dinitrogen to ammonia. The introduced Fe dopant significantly enhances nitrogen fixation activity of MoSe2. Furthermore, we constructed a heterostructure catalyst, the Fe-MoSe2/Mo2C with more versatile Mo valence states. The heterostructured electrocatalyst achieves an ammonia production rate of 3.38 μg h-1 cm-2, and a Faradaic efficiency of 30.8%, which is ~5 fold higher than that of pristine MoSe2. This study presents a novel approach for designing bionic nitrogen fixation electrocatalysts.