Direct ammonia and dihydroxyacetone production in an unbiased photoelectrochemical cell

Xiaotian Guo, Rui-Ting Gao (), Shijie Ren, Nhat Truong Nguyen, Haojie Chen, Limin Wu () and Lei Wang ()
Additional contact information
Xiaotian Guo: Inner Mongolia University
Rui-Ting Gao: Inner Mongolia University
Shijie Ren: Inner Mongolia University
Nhat Truong Nguyen: Concordia University
Haojie Chen: Inner Mongolia University
Limin Wu: Inner Mongolia University
Lei Wang: Inner Mongolia University

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Photoelectrochemical production of ammonia usually suffers from a low solar-to-ammonia efficiency and a high overpotential, which influences the bias-free operation of sustainable photoelectrochemistry. Herein, we realize solar-driven ammonia production from waste nitrate by constructing copper-osmium catalysts deposited on the Sb2(S,Se)3 semiconductor, enabling optimized photo-carrier transport pathways and a beneficial co-adsorption configuration of *NO3-H2O moieties. The photocathode reaches a photocurrent density of 5.6 mA cm−2 at 0 VRHE with a low onset potential of 0.86 VRHE and a Faradaic efficiency of 96.98% at 0.6 VRHE under AM 1.5 G illumination. We further employ glycerol oxidation reaction on ruthenium doped bismuth oxide catalyst decorated on titanium oxide photoanode, requiring an onset potential of 0.3 VRHE to enable bias-free operation. The unbiased photoelectrochemical system shows Faradaic efficiencies of over 97% for ammonia products and above 77% for glycerol oxidation product under AM 1.5 G illumination. The large-sized photoelectrodes maintain a stability for 24 h without noticeable degradation. Our works indicate that unassisted and stable PEC ammonia production is feasible with in situ glycerol valorization using the photoanode and photocathode.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61080-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-61080-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61080-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().