Two-in-one strategy to construct bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts for rechargeable Zn-air battery

Integrating two different catalytic active sites into one composite is a useful 2-in-1 strategy for designing high-efficient bifunctional catalysts,which can easily tailor the activity of each reaction.Hence,we adopt the 2-in-1 strategy to design the metal oxyhydroxide supported on N-doped porous carbons(PA-CoFe@NPC)as the oxygen bifunctional catalyst,where NPC provides the activity for oxygen reduction reaction(ORR)while the metal oxyhydroxide is responsible for oxygen evolution reaction(OER).Results demonstrate that the PA-CoFe@NPC indeed exhibits both super ORR and OER activities.Impressively,using bifunctional PA-CoFe@NPC as the oxygen electrode,the resulting Zn-air battery exhibits outstanding charge and discharge performance with the peak power density of 156.3 mW cm^(-2),and also exhibits a long-term cycle stability with continuous cyclic charge and discharge of 170 hours that is obviously better than the 20%Pt/C+IrO_(2)based one.The 2-in-1 strategy in this work can be efficiently extended to design other bi-or multi-functional electrocatalysts.

Carbon Nanofibers Encapsulated CoNiFe Bifunctional Electrocatalysts for Durable Zn-Air Batteries at Room and -40℃ Ultralow Temperatures

Reasonably designing composition and nanostructure to enhance the stability of bifunctional catalysts is highly desired for rechargeable Zn-air batteries(ZABs).Here,porous carbon nanofibers(CNFs)encapsulated CoNiFe alloy nanoparticles(NPs)(CoNiFe/CNFs)were synthesized controllably by in-situ growth and cation etching.Electrochemical tests indicated that CoNiFe/CNFs exhibited excellent bifunctional performances in both oxygen evolution reaction(OER)and oxygen reduction reaction(ORR).Using CoNiFe/CNFs as bifunctional catalysts,the assembled ZABs presented ultralong durability up to 1050 and 660 h at 5 and 25 mA cm^(-2),respectively.The assembled flexible solid-state ZABs-based polyacrylamide(PAM)hydrogel exhibited a power density of 62.9 mW cm^(-2) and 66 h durability at 2 mA cm^(-2) under ultralow temperature of -40℃.The excellent performance of CoNiFe/CNFs was ascribed to the encapsulation of CNFs by the alloy NPs and the synergy of multi-metals in the alloy NPs,because the encapsulation could suppress alloy spillage and agglomeration and protect the catalytic sites from electrolyte deterioration,thereby boosting the durability of the resulting ZABs.