Engineering High-Energy Interfacial Structures for High-Performance Oxygen-Involving Electrocatalysis

Chunxian Guo; Yao Zheng; Jingrun Ran; Fangxi Xie; Mietek Jaroniec; Shi-Zhang Qiao

doi:10.1002/anie.201701531

Engineering High-Energy Interfacial Structures for High-Performance Oxygen-Involving Electrocatalysis

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2017 Jul 10;56(29):8539-8543. doi: 10.1002/anie.201701531. Epub 2017 Mar 24.

Authors

Chunxian Guo¹, Yao Zheng¹, Jingrun Ran¹, Fangxi Xie¹, Mietek Jaroniec², Shi-Zhang Qiao¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia.
² Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Kent State University, Kent, USA.

PMID: 28338264
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201701531

Abstract

Engineering high-energy interfacial structures for high-performance electrocatalysis is achieved by chemical coupling of active CoO nanoclusters and high-index facet Mn₃ O₄ nano-octahedrons (hi-Mn₃ O₄ ). A thorough characterization, including synchrotron-based near edge X-ray absorption fine structure, reveals that strong interactions between both components promote the formation of high-energy interfacial Mn-O-Co species and high oxidation state CoO, from which electrons are drawn by Mn^III -O present in hi-Mn₃ O₄ . The CoO/hi-Mn₃ O₄ demonstrates an excellent catalytic performance over the conventional metal oxide-based electrocatalysts, which is reflected by 1.2 times higher oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity than that of Ru/C and a comparable oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity to that of Pt/C as well as a better stability than that of Ru/C (95 % vs. 81 % retained OER activity) and Pt/C (92 % vs. 78 % retained ORR activity after 10 h running) in alkaline electrolyte.

Keywords: electrocatalysts; electrode materials; high-energy interfaces; nanocatalysis; oxygen evolution.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't