Electrochemical reduction of nitrite to ammonia on amorphous MoO nanosheets.

Electrocatalytic NO reduction to NH (NORR) is an appealing approach for mitigating NO pollution and for the synthesis of valuable NH, and so the exploration for high-performance NORR catalysts is pivotal yet remains challenging. Herein, amorphous MoO nanosheets (am-MoO) were designed as a high-performance NORR electrocatalyst, delivering a maximum NO-to-NH faradaic efficiency of 94.8% and NH yield rate of 480.4 μmol h cm at -0.6 V RHE. Theoretical computations revealed that the largely enhanced NORR activity of am-MoO originated from the amorphization-induced O-vacancies, which could enhance the NO-to-NH reaction energetics and hamper the competitive hydrogen evolution.