Rational design of bimetallic MXene solid solution with High-Performance electrocatalytic N 2 reduction.

Electrocatalytic N ₂ reduction reaction (eNRR) was an effective alternative method for green synthesis of NH ₃ . By combining the first-principal Density functional theory (DFT) calculations and Monte Carlo (MC) simulation, we systematacially investigated 24 types equal-ratio bimetallic MXene solid solution, involving 88 different catalysts. Our focus was on the catalytic performance of these materials in eNRR. The computational result indicate that MoW(3Mo) has high stability, selectivity (93.8 % against the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER)) and activity (U _L  = -0.26 V), which is significantly better than that of monometal Mo ₂ CO ₂ and W ₂ CO ₂ . This improvement in catalytic properties is attributed to the unique electronic structure (e.g. d-band center, charge) of bimetallic MXene solid solution. In explicit solvent conditions, the microenvironment of hydrogen bond in aqueous liquid thermodynamically promotes the catalytic property for eNRR and reduce the catalytic property of HER side reaction, but the kinetic barrier is also increased due to the effect of the hydrogen-bond microenvironment on proton migration. Overall, the obtained bimetallic MXene solid solution MoW(3Mo) exhibits excellent catalytic performance in eNRR.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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