High-throughput screening and DFT characterization of bimetallic alloy catalysts for the nitrogen reduction reaction

DFT calculations to understand the enhanced catalytic activity rooted in the electronic structure of the catalyst. Moreover, charge analysis showed significant charge transfer from Re and Mo to Au in these alloys, resulting in a change of their electronic structure, and improvement of their catalytic activity. Finally, the selectivity of the alloys was investigated by comparing the adsorption free energy of nitrogen and hydrogen adatoms, and the resulting theoretical faradaic efficiency. This work further confirms that alloying is an effective approach to enhance the catalytic activity of transition metals and highlights how machine learning algorithms trained with physically intuitive features of the materials can efficiently screen the chemical space of bimetallic alloys and predict the limiting potential for a reaction such as the NRR over these alloys, thereby reducing the computational cost of alloy catalyst design and providing an affordable path to electrocatalytic materials discovery.