New Electrolytic Devices Produce Ammonia with Exceptional Selectivity

Electrolytic ammonia production provides an attractive route for converting renewable energy into chemical energy. Challenges of increasing the ammonia selectivity over the kinetically favored hydrogen evolution reaction are being intensively researched. In recent work, Zheng et al. (2019) reported a hydrophilic-hydrophobic heterostructured Si-based photocathode that achieves 37.8% ammonia selectivity. In another report, Hawtof et al. (2019) claimed 100% ammonia selectivity in a plasma electrolytic system. While both of these exciting works represent two distinct approaches to selectively produce ammonia, both still suffer from poor energy conversion efficiencies.