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HETEROGENEOUS CATALYSIS

Ammonia history in the making

Nature Catalysis volume 4, pages 734–735 (2021)Cite this article

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The Haber–Bosch process was introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century; however, its mechanism remained controversial for many years. Thus, a comprehensive mechanistic picture was provided in the eighties.

Ammonia is essential to life. The industrial production of ammonia via the Haber–Bosch process owes its existence to the successful development of a fused Fe catalyst in 1910s. Enormous efforts to disclose the mechanism of the catalyst led to the development of a number of concepts and techniques that are commonly used in today’s catalysis research. Nevertheless, by the 1970s the interpretation of the reaction mechanism of ammonia synthesis was far from controversy-free1. With the advent of surface-science techniques, Ertl and co-workers elaborately carried out a set of model studies that eventually culminated in a detailed picture of the ammonia synthesis at iron surfaces, as summarized in a seminal report from 1983 (ref. 2).

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Fig. 1: Surface science studies disclose the mechanism of N2 conversion.

References

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  1. Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, China

    Jianping Guo & Ping Chen

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  1. Jianping Guo
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  2. Ping Chen
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Correspondence to Ping Chen.

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Guo, J., Chen, P. Ammonia history in the making. Nat Catal 4, 734–735 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-021-00676-0

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