Plasma‐Electrocatalysis Cascade Synthesis of Deuterated Ammonia
Deuterated ammonia (ND<sub>3</sub>) exhibits growing market demand in the fields of chemical analysis, pharmaceutical industry and semiconductor manufacturing. Currently, industrial production of ND<sub>3</sub> relies on harsh conditions and complex processes, leading to high production cost and security risk. Herein, we propose a sustainable relay strategy to produce ND<sub>3</sub> by using air and deuterium oxide (D<sub>2</sub>O) as raw materials, including plasma-driven air-to-NO<sub>x</sub> conversion and electrocatalytic NO<sub>x</sub> <sup>-</sup>-to-ND<sub>3</sub> conversion. The insufficient supply of reactive deuterium (*D) leads to sluggish kinetics of electrocatalytic deuterium reaction. The well-designed F modified cobalt (F-Co) catalyst exhibits a remarkable yield of 0.75 mmol h<sup>-1</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> and a Faradaic efficiency of 80.43% for ND<sub>3</sub> at 200 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>. The combined results of characterizations reveal that fluorine (F) atom can boost D<sub>2</sub>O dissociation and suppress competing deuterium evolution reaction, thereby providing abundant *D for deuteration reaction. Notably, a pilot-scale demonstration system, consisting of non-thermal plasma, flow electrolyzer, air stripping and ammonia absorber, is constructed to produce practicable ND<sub>3</sub> solution (2.8 wt%) with ∼21.45 mmol h<sup>-1</sup> ND<sub>3</sub> production capability by using air and D<sub>2</sub>O as sources.
Authors
- Kaiwen Yang
- Shuhe Han (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0514-5669)
- Yanmei Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7673-4367)
- Yifu Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7927-1350)
- Qixing Wang
- Bin Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0542-1819)
- Runchao Qin
Institutions
- Tianjin University (CN)
- Tianjin Energy Investment Group (China) (CN)
- Unité Matériaux et Transformations (FR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Angewandte Chemie International Edition
- Published
- 2025-09-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202515856
- Primary Topic
- Ammonia Synthesis and Nitrogen Reduction
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00