Conversion of dinitrogen to ammonia on Ru atoms supported on boron sheets: a DFT study

Abstract

The prevalent catalysts for natural and artificial N₂ fixation are transition-metal (TM) atoms. By using density functional theory computations, several TM atoms embedded on boron sheets as N₂ fixation electrocatalysts were investigated in this work. Our results revealed that single ruthenium (Ru) atom-doped boron sheets exhibited outstanding catalytic activity for ammonia synthesis at ambient conditions through the distal pathway with small activation barrier of 0.42 eV; this was less than half of that of the reported flat Ru (0001) catalysts (1.08 eV). These results highlight the value of boron as a substrate for the design of single-atom catalysts due to its unique electron-deficient features.