  Many ligands commonly used to prepare nanoparticle catalysts with precise
nanoscale features contain nitrogen (e.g., oleylamine); here, we found that the
use of nitrogen-containing ligands during the synthesis of metal oxide
nanoparticle catalysts substantially impacted product analysis during
photocatalytic studies. We confirmed these experimental results via hybrid
Density Functional Theory computations of the materials' electronic properties
to evaluate their viability as photocatalysts for nitrogen reduction. This
nitrogen ligand contamination, and subsequent interference in photocatalytic
studies, is avoidable through the careful design of synthetic pathways that
exclude nitrogen-containing constituents. This result highlights the urgent
need for careful evaluation of catalyst synthesis protocols, as contamination
by nitrogen-containing ligands may go unnoticed since the presence of nitrogen
is often not detected or probed.
