Amorphous engineered cerium oxides photocatalyst for efficient nitrogen fixation

Amorphization engineering exhibits the tremendous development potential and visible prospect for inert nitrogen molecules activation by virtue of captivating structure features. In this work, we realize amorphization engineering on cerium oxides via reserving abnormal Ce(III) ions from carbonate. The intentional incorporation of amorphous structure can controllably induce a number of oxygen vacancies, which is avails for facilitating the carriers separation and N-2 cleavage. The presence of oxygen vacancies endows amorphization engineered cerium oxides (A-CeOx) outstanding performance for photocatalytic nitrogen at ambient (10(9) mu mol g(-1) h(-1)). These findings will help to design amorphous structure, understand catalytic mechanism and spur development of solar driven technologies for N-2 fixation.