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

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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.

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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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Jian Sheng, Sheng Zhu, Guodong Jia, Xu Liu & Yan Li

  2. Peking University Shenzhen Institute, Shenzhen, 518057, China

    Yan Li

  3. PKU-HKUST ShenZhen-HongKong Institution, Shenzhen, 518057, China

    Yan Li

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  1. Jian Sheng
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  2. Sheng Zhu
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  3. Guodong Jia
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  4. Xu Liu
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  5. Yan Li
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Correspondence to Yan Li.

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

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Sheng, J., Zhu, S., Jia, G. et al. Carbon nanotube supported bifunctional electrocatalysts containing iron-nitrogen-carbon active sites for zinc-air batteries. Nano Res. 14, 4541–4547 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3369-0

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