Towards a tunable carbon-based electrode for nitrogen reduction Craig Burdis , Jesús Barrio, Magda Titirici, Ifan E.L. Stephens Imperial College London, UK Lithium-mediated electrochemical nitrogen reduction to produce ammonia has been brought to the forefront of sustainable nitrogen reduction recently since it has been the only method to withstand rigorous protocols (1) In recent years, vast improvements have been made towards the selectivity and efficiency of the system by altering the composition of the electrolyte (2, 3) or by utilising a gas diffusion electrode (4) . The working electrode has been scarcely researched and thus far has been a metal current collector, commonly copper (3, 5) . Here, we are developing a tuneable carbon-based electrode which will introduce high surface area allowing for improved Faradaic Efficiencies and geometric current densities. Tuning the electrodes performance to favour lithium plating and SEI formation will be managed by altering the manufacturing process of the electrodes, namely during the pyrolysis step. References 1. Andersen, S. Z.; Čolić, V.; Yang, S.; Schwalbe, J. A.; Nielander, A. C.; McEnaney, J. M.; Enemark-Rasmussen, K.; Baker, J. G.; Singh, A. R.; Rohr, B. A.; Statt, M. J.; Blair, S. J.; Mezzavilla, S.; Kibsgaard, J.; Vesborg, P. C. K.; Cargnello, M.; Bent, S. F.; Jaramillo, T. F.; Stephens, I. E. L.; Nørskov, J. K.; Chorkendorff, I., Nature, 2019 , 570 (7762), 504–508. https://doi. org/10.1038/s41586-019-1260-x. 2. Du, H.-L., Matuszek, K., Hodgetts, R., Dinh, K., Cherepanov, P., Bakker, J. M., MacFarlane, D., &; Simonov, A. N., The chemistry of proton carriers in high-performance lithium mediated ammonia electrosynthesis. Energy &; Environmental Science , 2023 . https://doi.org/10.1039/D2EE03901 3. JWesthead, O., Spry, M., Bagger, A., Shen, Z., Yadegari, H., Favero, S., Tort, R., Titirici, M., Ryan, M. P., Jervis, R., Katayama, Y., Aguadero, A., Regoutz, A., Grimaud, A., &; Stephens, I. E. L., Journal of Materials Chemistry A , 2023 , https:// doi.org/10.1039/D2TA07686 4. ALazouski, N.; Chung, M.; Williams, K.; Gala, M. L.; Manthiram, K., Catal., 2020 , 3 (5), 463–469. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41929-020-0455-8. 5. Li, K., Shapel, S. G., Hochfilzer, D., Pedersen, J. B., Krempl, K., Andersen, S. Z., Sažinas, R., Saccoccio, M., Li, S., Chakraborty, D., Kibsgaard, J., Vesborg, P. C. K., Nørskov, J. K., &; Chorkendorff, I., ACS Energy Letters , 2022 , 7 (1), 36–41. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.1c02104
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