Designing highly active and more durable oxygen electrocatalysts for regenerative metal-air batteries and water splitting is of practical significance. Herein, an advanced Co/N-C-800 catalyst composed of abundant Co-Nx structures and carbon defects derived from cobalt phthalocyanine is synthesized. Remarkably, this catalyst exhibits favorable catalytic performance toward the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with a receivable overpotential of 274 mV in an alkaline medium achieving a current density of 10 mA cm-2 and a Tafel slope of 43.6 mV decade-1, outperforming the commercial RuO2 catalyst. It further displays a high half-wave potential (0.82 V) for the oxygen reduction reaction in 0.1 M KOH. Theoretical calculations reveal that the Co-Nx active sites along with the carbon defects can decrease the adsorption energy of intermediates (OH*, O*, and OOH*) and enhance the electron-transfer ability, thus boosting the OER process.
Keywords: DFT computation; bifunctional N-doped carbon; defect; oxygen evolution reaction; oxygen reduction reaction.