A Stable Rechargeable Aqueous Zn-Air Battery Enabled by Heterogeneous MoS2 Cathode Catalysts

Min Wang; Xiaoxiao Huang; Zhiqian Yu; Pei Zhang; Chunyang Zhai; Hucheng Song; Jun Xu; Kunji Chen

doi:10.3390/nano12224069

A Stable Rechargeable Aqueous Zn-Air Battery Enabled by Heterogeneous MoS₂ Cathode Catalysts

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Nov 18;12(22):4069. doi: 10.3390/nano12224069.

Authors

Min Wang¹, Xiaoxiao Huang², Zhiqian Yu¹, Pei Zhang³, Chunyang Zhai², Hucheng Song¹, Jun Xu¹, Kunji Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
² School of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China.
³ College of Electrical and Information Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, Zhengzhou 450002, China.

Abstract

Aqueous rechargeable zinc (Zn)−air batteries have recently attracted extensive research interest due to their low cost, environmental benignity, safety, and high energy density. However, the sluggish kinetics of oxygen (O2) evolution reaction (OER) and the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) of cathode catalysts in the batteries result in the high over-potential that impedes the practical application of Zn−air batteries. Here, we report a stable rechargeable aqueous Zn−air battery by use of a heterogeneous two-dimensional molybdenum sulfide (2D MoS2) cathode catalyst that consists of a heterogeneous interface and defects-embedded active edge sites. Compared to commercial Pt/C-RuO2, the low cost MoS2 cathode catalyst shows decent oxygen evolution and acceptable oxygen reduction catalytic activity. The assembled aqueous Zn−air battery using hybrid MoS2 catalysts demonstrates a specific capacity of 330 mAh g−1 and a durability of 500 cycles (~180 h) at 0.5 mA cm−2. In particular, the hybrid MoS2 catalysts outperform commercial Pt/C in the practically meaningful high-current region (>5 mA cm−2). This work paves the way for research on improving the performance of aqueous Zn−air batteries by constructing their own heterogeneous surfaces or interfaces instead of constructing bifunctional catalysts by compounding other materials.

Keywords: 2D MoS2; OER; ORR; Zn–air batteries; defects-embedded.

Grants and funding

This research was partially supported financially by NSFC (nos. 61921005, 62104099, 62105048, 61735008, 11774155 and 62004078), the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFB2200101), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu province (BK20190313 and BK20201073), Key Scientific Research Project in Colleges and Universities of Henan Province of China (Grant No. 21A416001) and Open project of Nanjing University Solid State Microstructure Laboratory (Grant No. M34057, M35033, M35062, M35059).