Today, industrial ammonia synthesis mainly depends on the Haber-Bosch process which causes a lot of energy consumption and huge CO2 emissions.Electrochemical N2 reduction reaction (NRR) is considered as a more sustainable and environmentally benign alternative to produce ammonia, but requires efficient catalyst to overcome the difficulty of N2 activation. In this work, we report that MOF-derived C@NiO@Ni microtubes behave as a high-efficiency electrocatalyst in 0.1 M KOH electrolyte. This electrocatalyst achieves a high NH3 yield of 43.15 μg h-1 mg-1cat. and a Faradaic efficiency of 10.9% at -0.7 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode. Experimental results indicate the excellent NRR performance originates from the oxygen vacancies in NiO. Moreover, abundant NiO/Ni interfaces are conductive to proton adsorption and further enhance the NRR performance

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/SE/C9SE00691E#!divAbstract