@article{Zhang2023, 
author = {Canhui Zhang and Xingkun Wang and Kai Song and Kaiyue Chen and Shuixing Dai and Huanlei Wang and Minghua Huang},
title = {Engineering adjacent Fe3C as proton-feeding centers to single Fe sites enabling boosted oxygen reduction reaction kinetics for robust Zn-air batteries at high current densities},
year = {2023},
journal = {Nano Research},
volume = {16},
number = {7},
pages = {9371-9378},
keywords = {oxygen reduction reaction, water dissociation, discharge stability, proton-coupled electron transfer},
url = {https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.1007/s12274-023-5578-1},
doi = {10.1007/s12274-023-5578-1},
abstract = {Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) plays an important role in the next-generation energy storage technologies, whereas it involves the sluggish and complicated proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) steps that greatly limit the ORR kinetics. Therefore, it is urgent to construct an efficient catalyst that could simultaneously achieve the rapid oxygen-containing intermediates conversion and fast PCET process but remain challenging. Herein, the adjacent Fe3C nanoparticles coupling with single Fe sites on the bubble-wrap-like porous N-doped carbon (Fe3C@FeSA-NC) were deliberately constructed. Theoretical investigations reveal that the adjacent Fe3C nanoparticles speed up the water dissociation and serve as proton-feeding centers for boosting the ORR kinetics of single Fe sites. Benefiting from the synergistic effect of the Fe3C and single Fe sites, the Fe3C@FeSA-NC affords an excellent half-wave potential of 0.88 V, and enables the assembled Zn-air batteries with the high peak power density of 164.5 mW·cm−2 and long-term stability of over 200 h at high current densities at 50 mA·cm−2. This work clarifies the mechanism for improving ORR kinetics of single atomic sites by engineering the adjacent proton-feeding centers, shedding light on the rational design of cost-effective electrocatalysts for energy conversion and storage technologies.}
}