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Research Article

Synergy between isolated Fe and Co sites accelerates oxygen evolution

Tianmi Tang1,§, Zhiyao Duan2,§( ), Didar Baimanov3,4,§, Xue Bai1, Xinyu Liu5, Liming Wang3, Zhenlu Wang1( ), Jingqi Guan1( )
Institute of Physical Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, 2519 Jiefang Road, Changchun 130021, China
State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
CAS Key Laboratory for Biomedical Effects of Nanomaterials and Nanosafety & CAS-HKU Joint Laboratory of Metallomics on Health and Environment, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, No.393 Middle Huaxia Road, Pudong New District, Shanghai 201210, China

§ Tianmi Tang, Zhiyao Duan, and Didar Baimanov contributed equally to this work.

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Graphical Abstract

Dual-metal isolated Fe-Co sites coordinated with nitrogen show better oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance than standalone FeN4 and CoN4 sites due to synergy between Fe and Co sites to stabilize the OOH* intermediate.

Abstract

Dual-metal catalysts with synergistic effect exhibit enormous potential for sustainable electrocatalytic applications and mechanism research. Compared with mono-metal-site catalysts, dual-metal-site catalysts exhibit higher efficiency for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) due to reduced energy barrier of the process involving proton-coupled multi-electron transfer. Herein, we construct dual-metal Fe-Co sites coordinated with nitrogen in graphene (FeCo-NG), which exhibits high OER performance with onset overpotential of only 126 mV and Tafel slope of 120 mV·dec−1, showing that the rate-determining step is controlled by the single-electron transfer step. Theoretical calculations reveal that the FeN4 site exhibits lower OER overpotential than the CoN4 site due to appropriate adsorption energy of OOH* on the former, while the O* adsorbed on the adjacent Co site could stabilize the OOH* on the FeN4 site through hydrogen bond interaction.

Keywords

theoretical calculationoxygen evolution reactionFe-N-CCo-N-Cdual-atom catalysis

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Nano Research
Volume 16 Issue 2,
February 2023
Pages 2218-2223
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-022-5001-3
Cite this article:
Tang T, Duan Z, Baimanov D, et al. Synergy between isolated Fe and Co sites accelerates oxygen evolution. Nano Research, 2023, 16(2): 2218-2223. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5001-3
Topics:
Electrocatalysis Oxygen evolution reaction

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Received: 01 July 2022
Revised: 30 August 2022
Accepted: 01 September 2022
Published: 22 October 2022
© Tsinghua University Press 2022
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