Abstract
The excess emission of nitrate from human activities disturbs the global nitrogen cycle and thus needs to be remediated. In this work, we prepared a La-doped Co3O4 nanoneedle arrays catalyst for highly efficient electrocatalytic reduction of NO3− to NH3 at low concentration. The La-doped Co3O4 nanoneedle arrays exhibit remarkable activity with the highest Faradaic efficiency of 95.5% and an ammonia yield rate of 4.08 mg/(h·cm2) at −0.3 V versus RHE in 0.02 mol/L NO3−. Experiments and theoretical calculations show that the La doping not only facilitates the surface reconstruction to form active La-Co(OH)2, but also inhibits the hydrogen evolution reaction over Co sites, thus promoting the NH3 production. This work provides new insights into the promoting effect of the rare earth elements in transition metal-based electrocatalyst for nitrate reduction.
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