The traditional synthesis of ammonia is an industrial process with high energy consumption that is not environmentally friendly; thus, it is urgent to develop cost-effective approaches to synthesize ammonia under ambient conditions.

Defective g-C₃N₄ nanorods enable to boots the adsorption and cleavage of N₂ molecules to achieve higher photocatalytic nitrogen fixation performance.

Nitrate is a crucial environmental pollutant, and its risk on ecosystem keeps increasing. Photocatalytic conversion of nitrate to ammonia can simultaneously achieve the commercialization of environmental hazards and recovery of valuable ammonia, which is green and sustainable for the planet. However, due to the thermodynamic and kinetic energy barriers, photocatalytic nitrate reduction usually involves a higher selectivity of the formation of nitrogen that largely limits the ammonia synthesis activity. In this work, we reported a green and facile synthesis of novel metallic ruthenium particle modified graphitic carbon nitride photocatalysts. Compare with bulk graphitic carbon nitride, the optimal sample had 2.93-fold photocatalytic nitrate reduction to ammonia activity (2.627 mg/h/g _cat ), and the NH ₃ selectivity increased from 50.77% to 77.9%. According to the experimental and calculated results, the enhanced photocatalytic performance is attributed to the stronger light absorption, nitrate adsorption, and lower energy barrier for the generation of ammonia. This work may provide a facile way to prepare metal modified photocatalysts to achieve highly efficient nitrate reduction to ammonia.

Superhydrophilic COFs with D–A structure accelerate photocatalytic synthesis of H₂O₂using water as a proton supply reservoir.