Recent progress on cathode material regulation for electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia

The accumulated nitrate in the environment from industry and agriculture breaks the natural nitrogen cycle and threats human health. The nitrate electroreduction to ammonia reaction (NO3RR) is a promising pathway due to the potential conversion of nitrate into ammonia with low post-treatment costs, which provides a novel and sustainable alternative for pollutant removal and simultaneous resource synthesis under ambient conditions. Reasonable design of electrocatalysts determines the performance of selective ammonia production. This review emphasizes the strategies to modulate the adsorption property by tuning the electronic structure and its surface atom, including defect and crystal facet engineering, heteroatom doping, and alloying. The product detection and intermediates in-situ characterization techniques are also discussed to deeply understand structure–activity relationship and the mechanism of NO3RR. Finally, some challenges and reasonable opinions for exploring novel efficient NO3RR catalysts are summarized. This review shall provide insightful guidance for enhancing the efficiency of electrocatalysts in electrocatalytic NO3RR and offers insights for NO3RR process.