Bimetallic Metal-Organic Framework Derived Metal-Carbon Hybrid for Efficient Reversible Oxygen Electrocatalysis

Yu Zhou; Yan Zhang; Xianzhen Xu; Shenlong Zhao; Ziyi Guo; Kuang-Hsu Wu; Chunhui Tan; Zonghua Wang

doi:10.3389/fchem.2019.00747

Bimetallic Metal-Organic Framework Derived Metal-Carbon Hybrid for Efficient Reversible Oxygen Electrocatalysis

Front Chem. 2019 Nov 8:7:747. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2019.00747. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Yu Zhou¹, Yan Zhang¹, Xianzhen Xu¹, Shenlong Zhao², Ziyi Guo³, Kuang-Hsu Wu³, Chunhui Tan³, Zonghua Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Shandong Sino-Japanese Center for Collaborative Research of Carbon Nanomaterials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University, Qingdao, China.
² School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
³ School of Chemical Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Kenginton, NSW, Australia.

Abstract

Development of cost-effective electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is key to enabling advanced electrochemical energy conversion technologies. Here, a novel nitrogen-doped metal-carbon hybrid (NiCo/CN) with a unique 3D hierarchical structure, consisting of uniformly distributed bimetallic nanoparticles encapsulated by partially graphitized N-doped carbon shells, is fabricated by a one-step pyrolysis of a nanoscale metal-organic framework as precursor, which exhibits excellent activity for both ORR and OER. The surface chemical changes on the carbon hybrid probed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) reveal the presence of favorable electronic interaction at the metal-nitrogen-carbon interface. Remarkably, the NiCo/CN catalyst prepared at high temperature (800°C) manifests a comparable performance to a commercial Pt/C catalyst for the ORR, but also superior stability, path selectivity and methanol tolerance. On the other hand, the E _onset (1.48 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode) and ${E_{j = 10 mA/cm}}^{2}$ of NiCo/CN-800 for OER is very close to the state-of-the-art noble catalyst RuO₂ (E_onset = 1.46 and ${E_{j = 10 mA/cm}}^{2}$ ) along with superior stability over 20 h of operation. The excellent catalytic property is attributable to the unique nanostructure, high porosity and the constructive synergistic effects of the elements M, N, and C.

Keywords: NiCo alloy composites; bi-functional electrocatalyst; metal-organic framework; oxygen evolution reaction; oxygen reduction reaction.