Citation: Rengui Li. Photocatalytic nitrogen fixation: An attractive approach for artificial photocatalysis[J]. Chinese Journal of Catalysis, ;2018, 39(7): 1180-1188. doi: 10.1016/S1872-2067(18)63104-3 shu

Photocatalytic nitrogen fixation: An attractive approach for artificial photocatalysis

Rengui Li

State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, the Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials (iChEM-2011), Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, Liaoning, China

Received Date: 12 March 2018
Revised Date: 20 May 2018

Fund Project: This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21501236, 21673230), Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP ZZBS201610), and Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2016167).

Ammonia synthesis via the Haber-Bosch process, which has been heralded as the most important invention of the 20th century, consumes massive amounts of energy, around~1%-2% of the world's annual energy consumption. Developing green and sustainable strategies for NH₃ synthesis under ambient conditions, using renewable energy, is strongly desired, by both industrial and scientific researchers. Artificial photosynthesis for ammonia synthesis, which has recently attracted significant attention, directly produces NH₃ from sunlight, and N₂ and H₂O via photocatalysis. This has been regarded as an ideal, energy-saving and environmentally-benign process for NH₃ production because it can be performed under normal temperature and atmospheric pressure using renewable solar energy. Although sustainable developments have been achieved since the pioneering work in 1977, many challenging issues (e.g., adsorption and activation of nitrogen molecules on the surface of photocatalysts under mild conditions) have still not been well solved and the photocatalytic activities are generally low. In this miniature review, I summarize the most recent progress of photocatalytic N₂ fixation for ammonia synthesis, focusing specifically on two attractive aspects for adsorption and activation of nitrogen molecules:one is engineering of oxygen vacancies, and the other is mimicking natural nitrogenase for constructing artificial systems for N₂ fixation. Several representative works focusing on these aspects in artificial systems have been reported recently, and it has been demonstrated that both factors play more significant roles in photocatalytic N₂ reduction and fixation under ambient conditions. At the end of the review, I also give some remarks and perspective on the existing challenges and future directions in this field.
- Photocatalysis,
- Nitrogen fixation,
- Ammonia synthesis,
- Artificial photosynthesis
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