Cover Feature: Ambient Electrosynthesis of Ammonia on a Core–Shell‐Structured Au@CeO2 Catalyst: Contribution of Oxygen Vacancies in CeO2 (Chem. Eur. J. 23/2019)

Abstract

The energy intensive Haber–Bosch process could potentially be replaced by the electrocatalytic N2 reduction reaction (NRR) to produce NH3 if high-efficiency electrocatalysts can be developed. This work reports an electrocatalytic N2 reduction reaction to produce NH3 using a core-shell structure Au@CeO2 electrocatalyst synthesized by a room-temperature spontaneous redox approach using Ce3+ and AuCl4−1 as reaction precursors. The experimental results and theoretical calculations validate that the abundant oxygen vacancies in shell layer CeO2 nanoparticles are electrocatalytically active sites for the N2 adsorption and activation, coupling with small-sized Au nanoparticles in the core layer of Au@CeO2, synergistically enhancing its NRR performance. More information can be found in the Full Paper by M. Han, H. Zhang et al. on page 5904.