Many MindedTokyo team's barium-based catalyst makes ammonia at milder conditions
A team at the Institute of Science Tokyo's MDX Research Center for Element Strategy has built a new catalyst for making ammonia (NH3) under milder conditions than the conventional process. Dr. Yihao Jiang, Professor Hideo Hosono and Professor Masaaki Kitano led the work, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2026.
The material is Ba3AlO4-xNyHz, with an anti-perovskite structure that holds oxide, nitride, hydride and molecular dinitrogen (N2)- anions. In the dinitrogen anions the N-N bond is weakened, which is the hard step in ammonia chemistry. The researchers grew the material as an ultrathin shell on aluminum oxide nanorods to expose more surface, and cobalt added during synthesis formed small clusters on the shell. The catalyst produced 15.9 mmol of NH3 per gram per hour at 300 °C and 0.9 MPa. Isotope labeling, spectroscopy and simulations pointed to activated (N2)- ions at cobalt, barium and aluminum interface sites. Barium sites weaken the bond and let the ion be replenished with N2, while cobalt and aluminum help later steps. The design was motivated by barium subnitride (Ba2N), which is very active but breaks down in hydrogen.
Why it matters: ammonia is the base of fertilizer, so the energy and pressure needed to make it feed directly into food costs. It is also a candidate carrier for stored hydrogen. A catalyst that works at lower temperature and pressure, and avoids scarce noble metals like ruthenium, points toward smaller, cheaper plants that could run on renewable power.
Caveats are significant. This is laboratory catalyst research with no scale-up or cost data. Kitano says the rate beats benchmark ruthenium and industrial iron catalysts, but the article gives no comparison figures. The source also does not support the claim of a 50% cut in green hydrogen storage costs. Watch for durability tests and pilot-scale results.
Source: Phys.org