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Nano Research 2021, 14(12): 4541-4547 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3369-0
Research Article | Issue | Published: 01 March 2021

Carbon nanotube supported bifunctional electrocatalysts containing iron-nitrogen-carbon active sites for zinc-air batteries

Show Author's Information Jian Sheng1,  Sheng Zhu1,  Guodong Jia1,  Xu Liu1,  Yan Li1,2,3( )
Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of NanodevicesState Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking UniversityBeijing100871China
Peking University Shenzhen InstituteShenzhen518057China
PKU-HKUST ShenZhen-HongKong InstitutionShenzhen518057China
Keywords:
carbon nanotube, zinc-air batteries, bifunctional electrocatalyst, single atoms, Fe-N-C sites
Topics:
Zinc air batteries
Cite this article:
Sheng J, Zhu S, Jia G, et al. Carbon nanotube supported bifunctional electrocatalysts containing iron-nitrogen-carbon active sites for zinc-air batteries. Nano Research, 2021, 14(12): 4541-4547. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3369-0
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Bifunctional electrocatalysts with high activity toward both oxygen reduction and evolution reaction are highly desirable for rechargeable Zn-air batteries. Herein, a kind of carbon nanotube (CNT) supported single-site Fe-N-C catalyst was fabricated via pyrolyzing in-situ grown Fe-containing zeolitic imidazolate frameworks on CNTs. CNTs not only serve as the physical supports of the Fe-N-C active sites but also provide a conductive network to facilitate the fast electron and ion transfer. The as-synthesized catalysts exhibit a half-wave potential of 0.865 V for oxygen reduction reaction and a low overpotential of 0.442 V at 10 mA·cm-2 for oxygen evolution, which is 310 mV smaller than that of Fe-N-C without CNTs. The rechargeable Zn-air batteries fabricated with such hybrid catalysts display a high peak power density of 182 mW·cm-2 and an excellent cycling stability of over 1, 000 h at 10 mA·cm-2, which outperforms commercial Pt-C and most of the reported catalysts. This facile strategy of combining single-site Metal-N-C with CNTs network is effective for preparing highly active bifunctional electrocatalysts.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Carbon nanotube supported bifunctional electrocatalysts containing iron-nitrogen-carbon active sites for zinc-air batteries

Show Author's information Jian Sheng1, Sheng Zhu1, Guodong Jia1, Xu Liu1, Yan Li1,2,3( )
Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of NanodevicesState Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking UniversityBeijing100871China
Peking University Shenzhen InstituteShenzhen518057China
PKU-HKUST ShenZhen-HongKong InstitutionShenzhen518057China

Abstract

Bifunctional electrocatalysts with high activity toward both oxygen reduction and evolution reaction are highly desirable for rechargeable Zn-air batteries. Herein, a kind of carbon nanotube (CNT) supported single-site Fe-N-C catalyst was fabricated via pyrolyzing in-situ grown Fe-containing zeolitic imidazolate frameworks on CNTs. CNTs not only serve as the physical supports of the Fe-N-C active sites but also provide a conductive network to facilitate the fast electron and ion transfer. The as-synthesized catalysts exhibit a half-wave potential of 0.865 V for oxygen reduction reaction and a low overpotential of 0.442 V at 10 mA·cm-2 for oxygen evolution, which is 310 mV smaller than that of Fe-N-C without CNTs. The rechargeable Zn-air batteries fabricated with such hybrid catalysts display a high peak power density of 182 mW·cm-2 and an excellent cycling stability of over 1, 000 h at 10 mA·cm-2, which outperforms commercial Pt-C and most of the reported catalysts. This facile strategy of combining single-site Metal-N-C with CNTs network is effective for preparing highly active bifunctional electrocatalysts.

Keywords: carbon nanotube, zinc-air batteries, bifunctional electrocatalyst, single atoms, Fe-N-C sites

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 10 January 2021
Revised: 26 January 2021
Accepted: 28 January 2021
Published: 01 March 2021
Issue date: December 2021

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2016YFA0201904), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21631002), Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (No. BNLMS-CXTD-202001), Shenzhen Basic Research Project (No. JCYJ20170817113121505), and Shenzhen KQTD Project (No. KQTD20180411143400981).

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