Imperial College London
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Prof. Ifan E. L. Stephens

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Materials

Professor in Electrochemistry
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 9523i.stephens Website

 
 
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Location

 

Molecular Sciences Research HubWhite City Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Iriawan:2021:10.1038/s43586-021-00053-y,
author = {Iriawan, H and Zamany, S and Zhang, X and Comer, B and Barrio, J and Chen, P and Medford, A and Stephens, I and Chorkendorff, I and Shao-Horn, Y},
doi = {10.1038/s43586-021-00053-y},
journal = {Nature Reviews Methods Primers},
title = {Methods for nitrogen activation by reduction and oxidation},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43586-021-00053-y},
volume = {1},
year = {2021}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - The industrial Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia (NH3) from dinitrogen (N2) is crucial for modern society. However, N2 activation is inherently challenging and the Haber-Bosch process has significant drawbacks, as it is highly energy intensive, not sustainable due to substantial CO2 emissions primarily from the generation of H2 and requires large-centralized facilities. New strategies of sustainable N2 activation, such as low-temperature thermochemical catalysis and (photo)electrocatalysis, have been pursued, but progress has been hindered by the lack of rigor and reproducibility in the collection and analysis of results. In this Primer, we provide a holistic step-by-step protocol, applicable to all nitrogen-transformation reactions, focused on verifying genuine N2 activation by accounting for all contamination sources. We compare state-of-the-art results from different catalytic reactions following the protocol’s framework, and discuss necessary reporting metrics and ways to interpret both experimental and density functional theory results. This Primer covers various common pitfalls in the field, best practices to improve reproducibility and cost-efficient methods to carry out rigorous experimentation. The future of nitrogen catalysis will require an increase in rigorous experimentation and standardization to prevent false positives from appearing in the literature, which can enable advancing towards practical technologies for the activation of N2.
AU  - Iriawan,H
AU  - Zamany,S
AU  - Zhang,X
AU  - Comer,B
AU  - Barrio,J
AU  - Chen,P
AU  - Medford,A
AU  - Stephens,I
AU  - Chorkendorff,I
AU  - Shao-Horn,Y
DO  - 10.1038/s43586-021-00053-y
PY  - 2021///
SN  - 2662-8449
TI  - Methods for nitrogen activation by reduction and oxidation
T2  - Nature Reviews Methods Primers
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43586-021-00053-y
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/99669
VL  - 1
ER  -
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