Highly Selective Electrochemical Nitrate to Ammonia Conversion by Dispersed Ru in a Multielement Alloy Catalyst

Electrochemical reduction of nitrate to ammonia (NH3) converts an environmental pollutant to a critical nutrient.However,current electrochemical nitrate reduction operations based on monometallicand bimetallic catalysts are limited in NH3 selectivityand catalyst stability, especially in acidic environments. Meanwhile,catalysts with dispersed active sites generally exhibit a higher atomicutilization and distinct activity. Herein, we report a multielementalloy nanoparticle catalyst with dispersed Ru (Ru-MEA) with othersynergistic components (Cu, Pd, Pt). Density functional theory elucidatedthe synergy effect of Ru-MEA than Ru, where a better reactivity (NH3 partial current density of -50.8 mA cm(-2)) and high NH3 faradaic efficiency (93.5%) is achievedin industrially relevant acidic wastewater. In addition, the Ru-MEAcatalyst showed good stability (e.g., 19.0% decay in FENH3 in three hours). This work provides a potential systematic and efficientcatalyst discovery process that integrates a data-guided catalystdesign and novel catalyst synthesis for a range of applications.