A Possible Prebiotic Formation of Ammonia from Dinitrogen on Iron Sulfide Surfaces

Teaching an old dog a new fix: Nitrogen fixation under mild conditions is still one of the most challenging tasks in chemistry. A method for the synthesis of ammonia from molecular nitrogen using hydrogen sulfide as a reductant and freshly precipitated iron sulfide as a mediator is described. The reaction (see scheme) may be a primordial inorganic ancestor of the enzyme nitrogenase.