An Oxygen-Vacancy-Rich Semiconductor-Supported Bifunctional Catalyst for Efficient and Stable Zinc-Air Batteries

作者：Liu, Guihua; Li, Jingde; Fu, Jing; Jiang, Gaopeng; Lui, Gregory; Luo, Dan; Deng, Ya-Ping; Zhang, Jing; Cano, Zachary P.; Yu, Aiping; Su, Dong; Bai, Zhengyu^*; Yang, Lin; Chen, Zhongwei^*

来源：Advanced Materials, 2019, 31(6): 1806761.

DOI：10.1002/adma.201806761

• bifunctional catalysts
• metal-support interactions
• oxygen evolution reaction
• oxygen vacancies
• zinc-air batteries

The highly oxidative operating conditions of rechargeable zinc-air batteries causes significant carbon-support corrosion of bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts. Here, a new strategy for the catalyst support design focusing on oxygen vacancy (OV)-rich, low-bandgap semiconductor is proposed. The OVs promote the electrical conductivity of the oxide support, and at the same time offer a strong metal-support interaction (SMSI), which enables the catalysts to have small metal size, high catalytic activity, and high stability. The strategy is demonstrated by successfully synthesizing ultrafine Co-metal-decorated 3D ordered macroporous titanium oxynitride (3DOM-Co@TiOxNy). The 3DOM-Co@TiOxNy catalyst exhibits comparable activities for oxygen reduction and evolution reactions, but much higher cycling stability than noble metals in alkaline conditions. The zinc-air battery using this catalyst delivers an excellent stability with less than 1% energy efficiency loss over 900 charge-discharge cycles at 20 mA cm(-2). The high stability is attributed to the strong SMSI between Co and 3DOM-TiOxNy which is verified by density functional theory calculations. This work sheds light on using OV-rich semiconductors as a promising support to design efficient and durable nonprecious electrocatalysts.

• 出版日期2019-2-8
• 单位河南师范大学