Electrochemical and Chemical Instability of Vanadium Nitride in the Synthesis of Ammonia Directly from Nitrogen

Recently, vanadium nitride (VN) was proposed as an active catalyst for a challenging electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) to ammonia. In this study, the stability of vanadium-nitride in electrolyte solutions of different pH values was studied under selected cathodic potentials. Intensive leaching of vanadium ions and nitrogen constituents into the bulk of the electrolyte solution was confirmed from ICP-OES and UV-Vis results.