New electrocatalysts and mechanisms pave the way to urea oxidation with superior activities and stability

• 作者: Yuntong Sun Sheng Chen
• 来源期刊: 中国科学：化学（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2022,（2）
• 所属期刊栏目: HIGHLIGHTS
• 页码范围: 199-201
• 页数: 3页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Urea(CO(NH2)2)is a globally abundant waste product in accompany with industrial activities and naturally breaks down into ammonia(NH3)and nitrate.Nowadays,over 80％of these pollutants are discharged directly into rivers and oceans,causing significant health and environmental pro-blems[1].As a consequence,there are enormous interests in urea oxidation reaction(UOR).UOR is a central half-reac-tion in urea electrolysis and urea-based fuel cells that can treat urea-rich wastewater simultaneously[1].Further,UOR only needs a thermodynamic potential of 0.37 V that is much lower than 1.23 V for oxygen evolution reaction(OER),which allows it to be an alternative of OER in water splitting.Therefore,UOR can combine hydrogen evolution reaction(HER)to allow for cheaper hydrogen production[2].In a similar way,UOR can be used as anodic reaction coupling with the reactions such as CO2 reduction,O2 reduction and N2 reduction to improve the energetic efficiency of overall systems[3].