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Electrocatalytic Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia Using Metal-Free Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Catalysts Derived from Setaria viridis
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  • Yuting Qu
    Yuting Qu
    College of Material Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Advanced Structural Materials, Ministry of Education, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun 130012, China
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  • Boran Yang
    Boran Yang
    College of Material Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Advanced Structural Materials, Ministry of Education, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun 130012, China
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  • Hongli Wang*
    Hongli Wang
    College of Material Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Advanced Structural Materials, Ministry of Education, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun 130012, China
    *Email: [email protected]
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  • Xingcheng Ma
    Xingcheng Ma
    College of Material Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Advanced Structural Materials, Ministry of Education, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun 130012, China
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  • Lixin Chen
    Lixin Chen
    College of Material Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Advanced Structural Materials, Ministry of Education, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun 130012, China
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  • Ying Gao
    Ying Gao
    College of Material Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Advanced Structural Materials, Ministry of Education, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun 130012, China
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  • Shicheng Sun*
    Shicheng Sun
    College of Material Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Advanced Structural Materials, Ministry of Education, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun 130012, China
    *Email: [email protected]
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Langmuir

Cite this: Langmuir 2025, 41, 38, 26322–26329
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https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.5c03389
Published September 19, 2025
Copyright © 2025 American Chemical Society

Abstract

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Electrocatalytic reduction of nitrate to ammonia is one potential strategy to remove nitrate and produce ammonia under ambient conditions. The use of carbonaceous materials as metal-free electrocatalysts is crucial for achieving high activity and precise product selectivity. Here, we propose a facile one-step calcination strategy to produce nitrogen-doped carbon (N–C-900–3) electrocatalysts derived from Setaria viridis (SV) for highly efficient nitrate-to-ammonia reduction (NO3RR). Benefiting from the high concentration of defects and the high content of graphitic-N moiety, which play a crucial role in promoting the dissociation of water and the N–H bond formation, the resultant N–C-900–3 displays outstanding electrocatalytic performance with a maximum NH3 yield rate of 6.23 mg h–1 cm–2 and a Faradaic efficiency (FE) of ca. 97.4%.

Copyright © 2025 American Chemical Society

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The Supporting Information is available free of charge at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.5c03389.

  • SEM, BET, XRD, and XPS data, additional electrochemical results, and catalytic performance comparison (PDF)

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Cited By

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This article is cited by 1 publications.

  1. Yuezhu Wang, Xianqiang Yu, Ruikai Qi, Cheng Fan, Mengxiao Zhong, Zhengjie Chen, Xiaofeng Lu. High-efficiency electrocatalytic nitrate-to-ammonia conversion over CoPd alloy nanoparticles embedded within carbon nanofibers. Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 2026, 707 , 139668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2025.139668

Langmuir

Cite this: Langmuir 2025, 41, 38, 26322–26329
Click to copy citationCitation copied!
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.5c03389
Published September 19, 2025
Copyright © 2025 American Chemical Society

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