Dear Colleagues,

Ammonia is an important chemical in agriculture, pharmaceutical and textile industries, which is industrially produced via a Haber-Bosch process that converts atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia by a reaction with hydrogen using a metal catalyst under high temperatures and pressures. This significant achievement was awarded by three Nobel prizes in Chemistry in 1918, 1931 and 2007, respectively. However, the Haber-Bosch process will annually consume more than 1% global fossil fuels in order to create the reaction condition of high temperatures and pressures and release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

In response to energy and environmental consequences, therefore, much attention has been paid to developing green and sustainable ambient ammonia synthesis technologies. Electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction is a promising alternative approach capable of producing ammonia on a large scale under the ambient condition. Since nitrogen is a stubbornly stable molecule, breaking it up typically requires an efficient electrocatalyst to achieve a high-performance ammonia production technology. Therefore, it is critically important to develop an efficient and cost-effective electrocatalyst for electrochemical nitrogen reduction. The scope of this Special Issue is to provide state-of-the-art achievements from fundamental to applications in electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction. This Special Issue will cover fundamental aspects on mathematical modeling and simulation, newly developed characterization technologies, novel catalyst synthesis and modification, and innovative reactor and system designs.

Dr. Zhefei Pan
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• ammonia synthesis
• electrocatalysis
• photocatalysis
• photochemical catalysis
• catalysts
• photocatalysts
• reactors
• zero-gap cell
• membrane electrode assembly
• li-mediated nitrogen reduction