Temporally Decoupled Ammonia Splitting by a Zn-NH 3 Battery with an Ammonia Oxidation/Hydrogen Evolution Bifunctional Electrocatalyst as a Cathode

• Published in: Journal of the American Chemical Society 2024-03, Vol.146 (11), p.7771-7778
• Main Authors: Feng, Yangyang, Huang, Lanting, Xiao, Zhiwei, Zhuang, Xu, Aslam, Tayyab Sohail, Zhang, Xiang, Tan, Yan-Xi, Wang, Yaobing
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0002-7863; 1520-5126
• DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c00369

Ammonia splitting to hydrogen is a decisive route for hydrogen economy but is seriously limited by the complex device and low efficiency. Here, we design and propose a new rechargeable Zn-NH battery based on temporally decoupled ammonia splitting to achieve efficient NH -to-H conversion. In this system, ammonia is oxidized into nitrogen during cathodic charging (2NH + 6OH → N + 6H O + 6e ) with external electrical energy conversion and storage, while during cathodic discharging, water is reduced to hydrogen (2H O + 2e → H + 2OH ) with electrical energy generation. In this loop, continuous and efficient H production without separation and purification is achieved. With the help of the ammonia oxidation reaction (AOR) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) bifunctional catalyst of Mo C/NiCu@C, a rechargeable Zn-NH battery is realized that exhibits a high NH -to-H FE of 91.6% with outstanding durability for 900 cycles (300 h) at 20 mA/cm , enabling efficient and continuous NH -to-H conversion.