Dinitrogen reduction to ammonia using transition metal catalysts is central to both the chemical industry and the Earth's nitrogen cycle. In the Haber–Bosch process, a metallic iron catalyst and high temperatures (400 °C) and pressures (200 atm) are necessary to activate and cleave NN bonds, motivating the search for alternative catalysts that can transform N2 to NH3 under far milder reaction conditions. Here, the successful hydrothermal synthesis of ultrathin TiO2 nanosheets with an abundance of oxygen vacancies and intrinsic compressive strain, achieved through a facile copper‐doping strategy, is reported. These defect‐rich ultrathin anatase nanosheets exhibit remarkable and stable performance for photocatalytic reduction of N2 to NH3 in water, exhibiting photoactivity up to 700 nm. The oxygen vacancies and strain effect allow strong chemisorption and activation of molecular N2 and water, resulting in unusually high rates of NH3 evolution under visible‐light irradiation. Therefore, this study offers a promising and sustainable route for the fixation of atmospheric N2 using solar energy.
Defect-rich ultrathin ZnAl-layered double hydroxide nanosheets are successfully prepared. Under UV-vis irradiation, these nanosheets are superior efficient catalysts for the photoreduction of CO2 to CO with water. The formed oxygen vacancies lead to the formation of coordinatively unsaturated Zn(+) centers within the nanosheets, responsible for the very high photocatalytic activities.
Nitrogen-doped porous carbon nanosheets (N-CNS) are synthesized by hydrothermal carbon coating of g-C3 N4 nanosheets followed by high-temperature treatment in N2 . g-C3 N4 serves as a template, nitrogen source, and porogen in the synthesis. This approach yields N-CNS with a high nitrogen content and comparable oxygen reduction reaction catalytic activities to commercial Pt/C catalysts in alkaline media.
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