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Progress on nanostructured gel catalysts for oxygen electrocatalysis

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Abstract

Driven by the serious ecological problems, it is urgent to explore high-efficiency sustainable energy technologies. Oxygen electrocatalysis acts as important half-reactions in the emerging electrochemical energy techniques including electrolysis and batteries. Gel composites exhibit the merits of rich porous, superior hydrophilic, and large specific surface area, which can significantly improve the electrolyte penetration and boost the kinetics process of oxygen electrocatalysis. In this invited contribution, the advances and challenges of a novel gel materials for oxygen electrocatalysis are summarized. Starting from the structure—activity—performance relationship of gel materials, synthetic routes of nanostructured gel materials, namely, radical polymerization, sol-gel method, hydrothermal/solvothermal reactions, and ligand-substitution method, are introduced. Afterward, the gel composites are divided into polymer-based, metal-based, and carbon-based materials in turn, and their applications in oxygen electrocatalysis are discussed respectively. At the end, the perspective and challenges for advanced gel oxygen electrocatalysts are proposed.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22102125). The Scientific Research Foundation of Wuhan Institute of Technology (No. K2021040) and the Innovation Foundation of Key Laboratory of Green Chemical Engineering Process of Ministry of Education (No. GCX202108) are also acknowledged.

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  1. Wuhan Institute of Technology, Hubei Key Laboratory of Plasma Chemistry and Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Green Chemical Engineering Process of Ministry of Education, Wuhan, 430205, China

    Huan Yang, Huilin Hu, Feng You, Junlong Yao & Xueliang Jiang

  2. Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage (Ministry of Education), Hubei Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry and Service Failure, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, 430074, China

    Chenfeng Xia & Bao Yu Xia

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  1. Huan Yang
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  2. Huilin Hu
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Correspondence to Xueliang Jiang or Bao Yu Xia.

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Yang, H., Hu, H., Xia, C. et al. Progress on nanostructured gel catalysts for oxygen electrocatalysis. Nano Res. 15, 10343–10356 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4677-8

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