In this work, the Notre Dame team combined atomistic simulations and experiments to show that conventional scaling laws for the design of catalysts for ammonia synthesis are shifted under plasma conditions. Vibrational excitation of nitrogen (N2) in the plasma alters the necessary dissociation energy and effectively ‘shifts’ the so-called volcano plot that maps the rate against various catalysts. These new results suggest cobalt may be the best catalyst for plasma-assisted catalytic synthesis of ammonia at atmospheric conditions.
More on this can be found in paper by P. Mehta, P. Barboun, F. A. Herrera, J. Kim, P. Rumbach, D. B. Go, J. C. Hicks, W. F. Schneider, “Overcoming ammonia synthesis scaling relations with plasma-enabled catalysis,” Nature Catalysis, vol. 1, pp. 269–275, 2018. (doi)