COBALT DOPED IRON BASED PEROVSKITE CATALYSTS FOR EFFICIENT REDUCTION OF NITRATE TO AMMONIA

Electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR) has received universal attention to synthesize value-added ammonia, which requires high-efficiency catalysts to reduce the reaction barrier. Herein, cobalt doped SrFeO3 nanofibers (SCFO) with abundant oxygen vacancies via electrospinning technique is proposed to convert nitrate to ammonia.  Such catalyst achieves an optimum Faradaic efficiency of 81.5% and a high NH₃ yield of 16.1 mg h⁻¹ mg-1cat. in a 0.1 M PBS + 0.1 M NaNO₃ solution at -0.9 V reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE). Moreover, the in-situ electrochemical test and DFT calculations confirm the potential-determining step (PDS) for SCFO is *NO-*N with an energy barrier of only 1.28 eV.