In order to reduce the pollution arising from automobiles exhausts, hydrogen has been extensively studied as the ultimate clean energy carrier to replace fossil fuel. Nowadays, ammonia decomposition to provide CO_x-free hydrogen has attracted renewed interest due to its oustanding advantages over the conventional routes based on carbonaceous materials. In this study, we studied the microstructure and catalytic performances of Fe-Co alloy nanoparticles, with different Fe/Co ratios, supported on commercial carbon nanotubes for ammonia decomposition. Elemental mapping of energy filtered transmission electron microscopy (EFTEM), electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) results suggest an almost complete alloy state between Fe and Co in all bimetallic samples. Catalytic activity and stability tests of different catalysts were carried out with 36000 ml/(h g_cat) NH₃ space velocity at given temperatures. Results indicated that replacing Co by less active but much cheaper Fe was found to keep the high activity but greatly improve the stability. We attributed these improvements to the electron donation effect of Co to Fe, which could assist the N adatoms to desorb from surface with a low activation barrier.

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