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Reassessment of the catalytic activity of bismuth for aqueous nitrogen electroreduction

Nature Catalysis volume 5, pages 382–384 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 25 May 2022

The Original Article was published on 04 March 2019

arising from: Hao, Y.-C. et al. Nature Catalysis https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-019-0241-7 (2019)

Electrochemical conversion of dinitrogen to give ammonia in aqueous electrolyte solutions at a high selectivity and rate requires a catalyst with unique properties. In particular, the surface of such a catalyst should exhibit a higher affinity for nitrogen, as opposed to that for hydrogen, to facilitate the nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) and suppress the hydrogen evolution reaction. Detailed density functional theory studies by Skúlason and co-workers1 suggest that this is hardly possible with most metals traditionally considered in electrocatalytic research. One metal not included in the analysis in ref. 1 and long known to be a very poor hydrogen evolution reaction catalyst2 is bismuth, which was recently introduced by Hao et al.3 as an efficient NRR catalyst in their article in Nature Catalysis. The density functional theory data reported in that publication clearly indicate that N2 adsorption on various bismuth surfaces is highly thermodynamically unfavourable with an essentially insurmountable energy barrier of more than 2.7 eV.

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Fig. 1: Characterization of the BiBP material.
Fig. 2: NRR electrocatalytic activity tests of the BiBP material.

Data availability

The data that support all the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon request.

References

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the use of facilities within the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy (funded by Australian Research Council grant LE110100223) and Monash X-ray Platform (funded by Australian Research Council grant LE130100072). Funding of this work by the Australian Research Council (Future Fellowship FT200100317 to A.N.S., Discovery Project DP200101878, Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science CE140100012) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (‘Renewable Hydrogen for Export’ project 2018/RND009 DM015) is gratefully appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry, Monash University, Melborne, Victoria, Australia

    Jaecheol Choi, Hoang-Long Du, Manjunath Chatti, Bryan H. R. Suryanto, Alexandr N. Simonov & Douglas R. MacFarlane

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  1. Jaecheol Choi
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  2. Hoang-Long Du
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  3. Manjunath Chatti
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  4. Bryan H. R. Suryanto
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  5. Alexandr N. Simonov
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  6. Douglas R. MacFarlane
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Contributions

J.C. undertook the materials synthesis and NRR experiments, and contributed to the writing of the manuscript, H.-L.D. performed the X-ray diffraction analysis, M.C. undertook the transmission electron microscopy characterization, B.H.R.S. performed NRR experiments; and A.N.S. and D.R.M. conceived and supervised the study, and contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Alexandr N. Simonov or Douglas R. MacFarlane.

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Competing interests

A.N.S. and D.R.M. have management and consulting roles in Jupiter Ionics Pty Ltd. All other authors have no competing interests.

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Nature Catalysis thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–5, Methods and References.

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Choi, J., Du, HL., Chatti, M. et al. Reassessment of the catalytic activity of bismuth for aqueous nitrogen electroreduction. Nat Catal 5, 382–384 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-022-00785-4

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