Authors
Ziwen Feng, Di Liu, Jiaqian Kang, Chunfa Liu, Lun Li, Juanjuan Wang, Zhenyu Zhang, Xingyou Li, Weng Fai Ip, Hui Pan
Published in
Journal of colloid and interface science. Volume 723. Pages 140941. Jun 13, 2026. Epub Jun 13, 2026.
Abstract
Identifying the true active sites is essential for the development of efficient catalysts for the electrochemical reduction of neutral, dilute nitrate to ammonia, because electrocatalysts often undergo structural transformations during operation conditions, potentially forming new active phases. In this work, copper oxides nanowires with varying Cu valence states were fabricated by in-situ electrochemical reduction of the pre-catalysts (denoted as P-CuO200, CuO300, and CuO400) for the electrochemical reduction of neutral, dilute nitrate (5 mM) to ammonia. In-situ and ex-situ characterizations indicated that the surface CuO of these pre-catalysts was partially or fully reduced to Cu2O or metallic Cu during activation process. The Cu2O species were further transformed into oxide-derived copper (OD-Cu), serving as the true active sites. Among them, the CuO300 (OD-Cu/Cu2O) catalyst with the highest Cu2O content, achieved a Faradaic efficiency of 90.8%, a nitrate conversion of 98.3%, and an ammonia yield of 3.3 mg h-1 cm-2 at -0.4 V vs. RHE, outperforming most reported Cu-based materials. Computational results confirmed that OD-Cu facilitated *NO2 adsorption and protonation, lowering the energy barrier. This study bridges the critical gap between pre-catalyst structures and dynamically formed active sites, providing valuable guidance for the rational design of Cu-based catalysts.
PMID:
42320129
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 20 Jun 2026.
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