An Isolated Zinc-Cobalt Atomic Pair for Highly Active and Durable Oxygen Reduction

Ziyang Lu; Bo Wang; Yongfeng Hu; Wei Liu; Yufeng Zhao; Ruoou Yang; Zhiping Li; Jun Luo; Bin Chi; Zheng Jiang; Minsi Li; Shichun Mu; Shijun Liao; Jiujun Zhang; Xueliang Sun

doi:10.1002/anie.201810175

An Isolated Zinc-Cobalt Atomic Pair for Highly Active and Durable Oxygen Reduction

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2019 Feb 25;58(9):2622-2626. doi: 10.1002/anie.201810175. Epub 2019 Feb 6.

Authors

Ziyang Lu¹, Bo Wang¹, Yongfeng Hu², Wei Liu³, Yufeng Zhao^{1

4}, Ruoou Yang⁵, Zhiping Li¹, Jun Luo³, Bin Chi⁶, Zheng Jiang⁵, Minsi Li⁷, Shichun Mu⁸, Shijun Liao⁶, Jiujun Zhang⁴, Xueliang Sun⁷

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Applied Chemistry in Hebei Province, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China.
² Canadian Light Source, 44 Innovation Boulevard, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 2 V3, Canada.
³ Center for Electron Microscopy and Tianjin Key Lab of Advanced Functional Porous Materials, Institute for New Energy Materials, School of Materials, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, 300384, China.
⁴ Institute of Sustainable Energy/College of Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, P. R. China.
⁵ Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201204, China.
⁶ The Key Laboratory of Fuel Cell Technology of Guangdong Province, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510641, China.
⁷ Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6A 5B9, Canada.
⁸ Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China.

PMID: 30600864
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201810175

Abstract

A competitive complexation strategy has been developed to construct a novel electrocatalyst with Zn-Co atomic pairs coordinated on N doped carbon support (Zn/CoN-C). Such architecture offers enhanced binding ability of O₂ , significantly elongates the O-O length (from 1.23 Å to 1.42 Å), and thus facilitates the cleavage of O-O bond, showing a theoretical overpotential of 0.335 V during ORR process. As a result, the Zn/CoN-C catalyst exhibits outstanding ORR performance in both alkaline and acid conditions with a half-wave potential of 0.861 and 0.796 V respectively. The in situ XANES analysis suggests Co as the active center during the ORR. The assembled zinc-air battery with Zn/CoN-C as cathode catalyst presents a maximum power density of 230 mW cm^-2 along with excellent operation durability. The excellent catalytic activity in acid is also verified by H₂ /O₂ fuel cell tests (peak power density of 705 mW cm^-2 ).

Keywords: Zn-air battery; cobalt; isolated atomic pairs; oxygen reduction reaction.

Grants and funding

51774253/National Natural Science Foundation of China-Yunnan Joint Fund