Electrocatalytic nitrate reduction to ammonia by a triethanolamine Cu(II) complex
Herein, a trinuclear coper(II) complex [Cu3II(H2L1)2(HCOO)4], (1), stabilized by triethanolamine, H3L1, is isolated and characterized by various spectroscopic techniques and through single crystal X-ray structure. In the complex 1, cooper(II) ions are in distorted octahedral coordination environment where two H3L1 ligands and four formates are present to hold this tri-nuclear copper assembly. The complex 1 depicts as an efficient catalyst to produce ammonia (NH3) through electrocatalytic nitrate reduction (eNO3RR) in a 0.2 M acetate buffer of pH 3, following a pseudo-first-order reaction kinetics producing 83% Faradaic Efficiency (FE%) of NH3 at −0.3 V vs. RHE with a yield rate of 21.56 μmol h−1 cm−2 at −0.5 V vs. RHE by suppressing the competitive HER.
Authors
- Debobrata Sheet (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2332-7754)
- Partha Halder (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6821-9346)
- Madhubonti Pal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1324-7059)
- Arghyadip Bhowmik (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3279-9318)
- Susmita Mondal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8795-942X)
- Dikshita Garg
- Arindam Dey
- Swapnendu Dutta
- Ishita Mukherjee
- Biswarup Chakraborty
Institutions
- Presidency University (IN)
- Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IN)
- Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IN)
- Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, West Bengal (IN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Discover Electrochemistry.
- Published
- 2026-02-06
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s44373-026-00092-8
- Primary Topic
- Ammonia Synthesis and Nitrogen Reduction
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India
- University Grants Commission
- Science and Engineering Research Board