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Thermodynamically controllable synthesis of ZIF-8 exposing different facets and their applications in single atom catalytic oxygen reduction reactions

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Abstract

The development of thermodynamically controllable synthetic strategy to manipulate the morphology of ZIF-8 without capping agent is essential to help understanding their facet effect and the structure-activity relationship of single atom catalysts derived from ZIF-8. Here, we prepared ZIF-8 with different morphologies (cube, truncated rhombododecahedral and rhombododecahedral) and thus area ratio of exposed {100}, {110} facets by a thermodynamically controllable synthetic strategy. When the reaction proceeds under room temperature (30 °C), the assembling of ZIF-8 followed an area-reducing layered growth mode, while switched to an integral layered growth mode at lower temperature −40 °C. Moreover, this strategy also works to obtain ZIF-8 encapsulated with metal precursors (Fe(acac)3, Cu(acac)2 and Co(acac)2). Single Fe atom anchored on nitrogen doped carbon catalysts (SA-Fe/CN) derived from Fe-ZIF-8 retain their original morphologies and the unsaturated surface-active sites on {100} facet, which further displays different catalytic performance towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). This work not only reveals the different growth pattern of ZIF-8, but also points out a new direction for designing and synthesizing MOFs with different morphology rationally.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Anhui Absorption Spectroscopy Analysis Instrument Co., Ltd. for XAFS measurements and analysis. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22102218), the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (No. 2020JJ4684), the science and technology innovation Program of Hunan Province (No. 2022RC1110), and the Open Sharing Fund for the Large-scale Instruments and Equipments of Central South University (No. CSUZC202221).

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  1. Runze Ma and Qiheng Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China

    Runze Ma, Jun Yan, Yu Tao, Shouyao Hu, Donghao Liu, Jiaxin Gong & Yu Xiong

  2. Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering, Institute of Solid State Chemistry, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Qiheng Li

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  1. Runze Ma
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Correspondence to Jun Yan or Yu Xiong.

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Thermodynamically controllable synthesis of ZIF-8 exposing different facets and their applications in single atom catalytic oxygen reduction reactions

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Ma, R., Li, Q., Yan, J. et al. Thermodynamically controllable synthesis of ZIF-8 exposing different facets and their applications in single atom catalytic oxygen reduction reactions. Nano Res. 16, 9618–9624 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5655-5

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