One-step synthesis of N, P co-doped porous carbon electrocatalyst for highly efficient nitrogen fixation

Heteroatom-doped porous carbon has attracted many researchers’ interests owing to their hierarchical porous and more active sites for nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR). However, the development of simple synthesis strategies to fabricate efficient catalyst is still remaining a challenge. In this work, a series of N, P co-doped porous carbon were prepared by one-step pyrolysis of zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-8) and triphenylphosphine (TPP) under nitrogen atmosphere. The obtained catalyst by calcinating ZIF-8 and TPP with the mass ratio of 1: 5 for three hours was named as PN-C-ZIF-8, which exhibited a high yield rate of ammonia (43.39 µg·h−1·mg−1cat.) and Faraday efficiency (16.67%) in 0.05 M H2SO4 at −0.3 V. More importantly, the PN-C-ZIF-8 catalyst had superior selectivity that no hydrazine by-products were detected and long-term durability for 72 h. This study provides an idea for the convenient design and preparation of heteroatom doped carbon materials.