The Construction of Surface-Frustrated Lewis Pair Sites to Improve the Nitrogen Reduction Catalytic Activity of In(2)O(3)

The construction of a surface-frustrated Lewis pairs (SFLPs) structure is expected to break the single electronic state restriction of catalytic centers of P-region element materials, due to the existence of acid-base and basic active canters without mutual quenching in the SFLPs system. Herein, we have constructed eight possible SFLPS structures on the In(2)O(3) (110) surface by doping non-metallic elements and investigated their performance as electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction catalysts using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The results show that P atom doping (P@In(2)O(3)) can effectively construct the structure of SFLPs, and the doped P atom and In atom near the vacancy act as Lewis base and acid, respectively. The P@In(2)O(3) catalyst can effectively activate N(2) molecules through the enzymatic mechanism with a limiting potential of −0.28 eV and can effectively suppress the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Electronic structure analysis also confirmed that the SFLPs site can efficiently capture N(2) molecules and activate N≡N bonds through a unique “donation-acceptance” mechanism.