Pressurized N directly fed to the RuAu/CeO catalyst porous electrode in a proton exchange membrane electrolyzer favoring electrochemical NH production.

The limited N solubility in the present aqueous electrolyte critically restricts the selectivity and activity of environment-friendly electrochemical NH production at high current density. Here we developed a high-performance electrolyzer for the electrochemical N reduction reaction (eNRR) using amorphous RuAu clusters anchored on CeO nanorods with rich oxygen vacancies (OVs) as the catalyst and a proton exchange membrane (PEM) as the solid-state electrolyte, in which N is directly delivered to the electrode across a gas diffusion layer. The PEM electrolyzer achieved a remarkable NH yield rate of 185.53 μg mg h at -0.3 V RHE under an applied N pressure of 4 bar, which is 5 times higher than that in aqueous electrolyte.