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Electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (eNRR) is one of the most important chemical reactions for the production of ammonia under ambient environment. However, the lack of in-depth understanding of the structure-activity relationship impedes the development of high-performance catalysts for ammonia production. Herein, the density functional theory (DFT) calculations are performed to reveal the structure–activity relationship for the single-atom catalysts (SACs) supported on g-C3N4, which is modified by molecular groups (i.e., H, O, and OH). The computational results demonstrate that the W-based SACs are beneficial to produce ammonia with a low limiting potential (UL). Particularly, the W-OH@g-C3N4 catalyst exhibits an ultralow UL of −0.22 V for eNRR. And the competitive eNRR selectivity can be identified by the dominant *N2 adsorption free energy than that of *H. Our findings provide a theoretical basis for the synthesis of efficient catalysts to produce ammonia.

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 01 April 2022
Revised: 04 May 2022
Accepted: 15 May 2022
Published: 30 June 2022
Issue date: October 2022

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2022

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 91934302, 51762005, and 21878078), Key Projects of Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (No. 2020GXNSFDA297015), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2020M683617XB), and the Opening Project of Guangxi Key Laboratory of Petrochemical Resource Processing and Process Intensification Technology (No. 2020K006). Density functional theory calculations were supported by the high-performance computing platform of Hongzhiwei and Guangxi University, Guangxi Postdoctoral Innovative Talents Support Program and Guangxi Science and Technology Base and Talent Special Project.

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