Black silicon based materials for photoelectrochemical nitrogen reduction

This work is an endeavour to employ photocatalytic reaction to mimic the natural synthesis of ammonia, adopting only sunlight, water and nitrogen as reactants. Silicon has been modified, decorated with gold nanoparticles and used to reduce molecular nitrogen into ammonia. The developed prototype has been further studied, and the reaction conditions was optimised, as well. Variety of catalyst used to boost the cell efficiency and dispersed Ru(III) found to have a significant impact in favour of increasing the cell efficiency.