Fe-N-C catalysts decorated with oxygen vacancies-rich CeOx to increase oxygen reduction performance for Zn-air batteries

Feng-Di Tu; Zi-Yun Wu; Pan Guo; Li-Xiao Shen; Zi-Yu Zhang; Yun-Kun Dai; Miao Ma; Jing Liu; Bin Xu; Yun-Long Zhang; Lei Zhao; Zhen-Bo Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.01.057

Fe-N-C catalysts decorated with oxygen vacancies-rich CeO_x to increase oxygen reduction performance for Zn-air batteries

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 May:637:10-19. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.01.057. Epub 2023 Jan 16.

Authors

Feng-Di Tu¹, Zi-Yun Wu¹, Pan Guo¹, Li-Xiao Shen², Zi-Yu Zhang¹, Yun-Kun Dai¹, Miao Ma¹, Jing Liu³, Bin Xu⁴, Yun-Long Zhang⁵, Lei Zhao⁶, Zhen-Bo Wang⁷

Affiliations

¹ MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Lab of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China.
² MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Lab of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China; State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, College of Environment and Chemical Engineering, Hebei Key Laboratory of Heavy Metal Deep-remediation in Water and Resource Reuse, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, Hebei Province, China.
³ Unipower Hydrogen Technology (Jiangsu) Corporation, No. 625, Wujin East Avenue, Wujin District, Changzhou 213176, Jiangsu Province, China; Key Laboratory of Superlight Materials and Surface Technology of Ministry of Education, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China.
⁴ Unipower Hydrogen Technology (Jiangsu) Corporation, No. 625, Wujin East Avenue, Wujin District, Changzhou 213176, Jiangsu Province, China.
⁵ MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Lab of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China. Electronic address: 20220123@hit.edu.cn.
⁶ MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Lab of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China. Electronic address: leizhao@hit.edu.cn.
⁷ MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Lab of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China; Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Special Functional Materials, Shenzhen Engineering Laboratory for Advance Technology of Ceramics, Guangdong Research Center for Interfacial Engineering of Functional Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, Guangdong Province, China. Electronic address: wangzhb@hit.edu.cn.

PMID: 36682114
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.01.057

Abstract

Platinum group metal (PGM)-free catalysts represented by nitrogen and iron co-doped carbon (Fe-N-C) catalysts are desirable and critical for metal-air batteries, but challenges still exist in performance and stability. Here, cerium oxides (CeO_x) are incorporated into a two-dimensional Fe-N-C catalyst (FeNC-Ce-950) via a host-guest strategy. The Ce⁴⁺/Ce³⁺ redox system creates a large number of oxygen vacancies for rapid O₂ adsorption to accelerate the kinetics of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Consequently, the as-synthesized FeNC-Ce-950 catalyst exhibits a half-wave potential (E_1/2) of 0.921 V and negligible decay (<2 mV for ΔE_1/2) after 5,000 accelerated durability cycles, significantly outperforming most of ORR catalysts reported in recent years and precious metal counterparts. When applied in a zinc-air battery, it demonstrates a peak power density of 175 mW cm^-2 and a specific capacity of 757 mAh g_Zn^-1. This study also provides a reference for the exploration of Fe-N-C catalysts decorated with variable valence metal oxides.

Keywords: Ce(4+)/Ce(3+) redox system; Cerium oxides; Nitrogen and iron co-doped carbon catalyst; Oxygen reduction reaction; Zinc-air battery.