FeCu bimetallic clusters for efficient urea production via coupling reduction of carbon dioxide and nitrate.

Urea electrosynthesis has appeared to meet the nitrogen cycle and carbon neutrality with energy-saving features. Copper can co-electrocatalyze among CO ₂ and nitrogen species to generate urea, however developing effective electrocatalysts is still an obstacle. Here, we developed a nitrogen-doped porous carbon loaded with FeCu clusters that convert CO ₂ and NO ₃ ^- into urea, with the highest Faradaic efficiency of 39.8 % and yield rate of 1024.6 μg h ^-1 mg _cat. ^-1 , under optimized ambient conditions, exceeding that at the Fe or Cu homogeneous sites. Furthermore, a favorable CN coupling pathway originates from *NHCO and *NHCONO two intermediates with lower free energy barriers on FeCu dual active sites are verified through in-situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and theoretical calculations. This research might provide deep insights into coupling mechanisms and investigation of efficient catalysts for green urea production.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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