Highly‐Exposed Co‐CoO Derived from Nanosized ZIF‐67 on N‐Doped Porous Carbon Foam as Efficient Electrocatalyst for Zinc‐Air Battery

Yixing Luo, Ming Wen*, Jian Zhou, Qingsheng Wu, Guangfeng Wei, Yongqing (Richard) Fu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Non-precious-metal based electrocatalysts with highly-exposed and well-dispersed active sites are crucially needed to achieve superior electrocatalytic performance for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) toward zinc-air battery (ZAB). Herein, Co-CoO heterostructures derived from nanosized ZIF-67 are densely-exposed and strongly-immobilized onto N-doped porous carbon foam (NPCF) through a self-sacrificial pyrolysis strategy. Benefited from the high exposure of Co-CoO heterostructures and the favorable mass and electron transfer ability of NPCF, the Co-CoO/NPCF electrocatalyst exhibits remarkable performance for both ORR (E1/2 = 0.843 V vs RHE) and OER (Ej = 10 mA cm-2 = 1.586 V vs RHE). Further application of Co-CoO/NPCF as the air-cathode in rechargeable ZAB achieves superior performance for liquid-state ZAB (214.1 mW cm−2 and 600 cycles) and flexible all-solid-state ZAB (93.1 mW cm−2 and 140 cycles). Results from DFT calculations demonstrate that the electronic metal-support interactions between Co-CoO and NPCF via abundant C-Nx sites is favorable for electronic structure modulation, accounting for the remarkable performance.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-9
Number of pages9
JournalSmall
Early online date25 Jun 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 25 Jun 2023

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