Abstract
Rapid recombination of photogenerated carriers and weak driving forces to inject hot electrons are critical bottlenecks in solar-driven ammonia borane hydrolysis. Herein, aided by machine learning, plasmon polarization-induced multi-field coupling is developed to enhance ammonia borane hydrolytic activity. The reconstructed surface unsaturated Moδ+ active sites exhibit well activity and high stability over 100 hours in AB hydrolysis, which deliver a turnover frequency up to 5806 min-1, representing competitiveness compared to non-noble and noble-metal based catalysts ever reported. It is verified that the polarized electric field facilitates carrier separation through incorporating polarization components (Ov and -OH), thereby promoting electron accumulation around Moδ+ active sites. Meanwhile, the local electric field enables highly delocalized hot electrons through plasmon oscillation, thus lowering the reaction barrier between Moδ+ and AB. In this work, the hot electrons are efficiently channeled via an enhanced feedback pathway, facilitating their transfer into B-H antibonding orbitals toward boosted AB hydrolysis.
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All data generated in this study are provided in the Supplementary Information/Source Data file. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Grant Nos. 62205165, 52102362, 51672143, 51808303).
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Y.Y., D.Y., and W.Y. conceived the idea and directed the project. P. Li performed the synthesis of the samples, material characterizations, experimental measurement and data analysis. N. Tu conducted the theoretical calculations and data analysis. J. Li gave assistance with data collection. H. Hou analyzed and discussed the results. Y.Y., D.Y., and W.Y. carried out the data analyses and co-wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the data and contributed to the manuscript.
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Li, P., Tu, N., Yang, Y. et al. Multi-field coupling enhanced plasmonic Moδ+ active site to efficiently hydrolyze ammonia borane. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71055-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71055-1
