一个由美国莱斯大学Naomi J. Halas等带领的合作团队开发出一种非贵金属光催化剂，并利用它在发光二极管照射下分解NH₃制氢气。相关论文于2022年11月25日发表在《科学》杂志上。

基于铂族金属的催化剂几十年来一直是化学工业的一个主要焦点。而在这项研究中，团队展示了等离子光催化可以在光照下将热力学无活性的、地球中含量丰富的过渡金属转变为具有催化活性的金属。Cu-Fe天线反应器络合物中的Fe活性位点在超快脉冲照明下的NH₃光催化分解效率与Ru非常接近。当使用发光二极管而不是激光照射时，这种催化剂依旧可以保持相当的光催化效率，甚至当反应规模增加了近三个数量级时也是如此。

研究人员表示，这一结果证明了使用非贵金属催化剂在电力驱动下从氨载体高效制氢气的潜力。

附：英文原文

Title: Earth-abundant photocatalyst for H2 generation from NH3 with light-emitting diode illumination

Author: Yigao Yuan, Linan Zhou, Hossein Robatjazi, Junwei Lucas Bao, Jingyi Zhou, Aaron Bayles, Lin Yuan, Minghe Lou, Minhan Lou, Suman Khatiwada, Emily A. Carter, Peter Nordlander, Naomi J. Halas

Issue&Volume: 2022-11-25

Abstract: Catalysts based on platinum group metals have been a major focus of the chemical industry for decades. We show that plasmonic photocatalysis can transform a thermally unreactive, earth-abundant transition metal into a catalytically active site under illumination. Fe active sites in a Cu-Fe antenna-reactor complex achieve efficiencies very similar to Ru for the photocatalytic decomposition of ammonia under ultrafast pulsed illumination. When illuminated with light-emitting diodes rather than lasers, the photocatalytic efficiencies remain comparable, even when the scale of reaction increases by nearly three orders of magnitude. This result demonstrates the potential for highly efficient, electrically driven production of hydrogen from an ammonia carrier with earth-abundant transition metals.

DOI: abn5636

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn5636