TY - JOUR
T1 - Combinatorial Screening of Bimetallic Electrocatalysts for Nitrogen Reduction to Ammonia Using a High-Throughput Gas Diffusion Electrode Cell Design
AU - Kolen, Martin
AU - Antoniadis, Grigorios
AU - Schreuders, Herman
AU - Boshuizen, Bart
AU - van Noordenne, Dylan D.
AU - Ripepi, Davide
AU - Smith, Wilson A.
AU - Mulder, Fokko M.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) is a promising alternative to the current greenhouse gas emission intensive process to produce ammonia (NH3) from nitrogen (N2). However, finding an electrocatalyst that promotes NRR over the competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has proven to be difficult. This difficulty could potentially be addressed by accelerating the electrocatalyst development for NRR by orders of magnitude using high-throughput (HTP) workflows. In this work, we developed a HTP gas diffusion electrode (GDE) cell to screen up to 16 electrocatalysts in parallel. The key innovation of the cell is the use of expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) gas diffusion layers (GDL) which simplifies the handling of catalyst arrays compared to carbon fabrics and enables sufficient N2 mass transport. We demonstrate the robustness of the HTP workflow by screening 528 bimetallic catalysts of composition AB (A,B = Ag, Al, Au, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pd, Re, Ru, W) for NRR activity. None of the materials produced ammonia significantly over background level which emphasizes the difficulty of finding active electrocatalysts for NRR and narrows down the search space for future studies.
AB - The electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) is a promising alternative to the current greenhouse gas emission intensive process to produce ammonia (NH3) from nitrogen (N2). However, finding an electrocatalyst that promotes NRR over the competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has proven to be difficult. This difficulty could potentially be addressed by accelerating the electrocatalyst development for NRR by orders of magnitude using high-throughput (HTP) workflows. In this work, we developed a HTP gas diffusion electrode (GDE) cell to screen up to 16 electrocatalysts in parallel. The key innovation of the cell is the use of expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) gas diffusion layers (GDL) which simplifies the handling of catalyst arrays compared to carbon fabrics and enables sufficient N2 mass transport. We demonstrate the robustness of the HTP workflow by screening 528 bimetallic catalysts of composition AB (A,B = Ag, Al, Au, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pd, Re, Ru, W) for NRR activity. None of the materials produced ammonia significantly over background level which emphasizes the difficulty of finding active electrocatalysts for NRR and narrows down the search space for future studies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85144628080&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1149/1945-7111/aca6a7
DO - 10.1149/1945-7111/aca6a7
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85144628080
SN - 0013-4651
VL - 169
JO - Journal of the Electrochemical Society
JF - Journal of the Electrochemical Society
IS - 12
M1 - 124506
ER -