Vapor Deposited Ru and Mo Nanostructured Electrocatalysts Towards Nitrogen Reduction Reactions

The world's energy supply is undergoing a transformation, incorporating a diversity of sustainable technologies. Among these, hydrogen is attracting increasing attention as an energy carrier, produced either directly or via ammonia as a high‐energy density carrier. Central to both routes are electrocatalysts that can convert electrical power into chemical reactions (electrochemistry). To meet the demands of large area electrodes, there is growing interest in industrial coating processes, such as the combined approach of electrochemical etching followed by magnetron sputtering. In this study, titanium substrates are electrochemically etched to create nanoporous structures which are then coated with ultrathin films of catalytic materials (ruthenium and molybdenum) and finally overcoated with a hydrophobic plasma polymer nanolayer. This presents as an alternate pathway to produce scaled electrocatalysts for driving forward the next generation of electrochemical energy generation technologies.