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Nano Research 2022, 15(3): 1942-1948 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3837-6
Research Article | Issue | Published: 15 September 2021

Mn, N co-doped Co nanoparticles/porous carbon as air cathode for highly efficient rechargeable Zn-air batteries

Show Author's Information Hanzhen Zheng1,§,  Fei Ma1,§,  Hongcen Yang1,  Xiaogang Wu1,  Rui Wang1,  Dali Jia1,  Zhixia Wang1,  Niandi Lu1,  Fen Ran2,  Shanglong Peng1( )
National & Local Joint Engineering Laboratory for Optical Conversion Materials and Technology, School of Physical Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Processing and Recycling of Non-ferrous Metals, School of Material Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou 730050, China

§Hanzhen Zheng and Fei Ma contributed equally to this work.

Keywords:
Zn-air batteries, bifunctional electrocatalysts, Co-N-C, Mn-doped
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Zheng H, Ma F, Yang H, et al. Mn, N co-doped Co nanoparticles/porous carbon as air cathode for highly efficient rechargeable Zn-air batteries. Nano Research, 2022, 15(3): 1942-1948. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3837-6
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Abstract Full text About this article

Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are generally catalyzed by precious metals (Pt) and metal oxides (IrO2) which still have many shortages including expensive price, poor selectivity and undesirable stability. In this work, we report a Mn0-doped CoNx on N-doped porous carbon (Mn-CoNx/N-PC) composite from carbonizing metal-organic framework (MOF) derivative as the dual-functional catalyst to boost both the ORR and OER performances. Owing to the strong coordination effect between nitrogen and metal elements, the introduction of N can obviously improve the content of Co-N-C active sites for ORR. Meanwhile, the Mn-doping significantly regulates the electronic structure of the Co element and increases the content of Co0 which provide efficient OER active sites. Mn-CoNx/N-PC catalyst delivers super dual-functional activity with a half-wave potential of 0.85 V, better than the 20% Pt/C catalyst (0.82 V). When used in Zn-air batteries for testing, Mn-CoNx/N-PC electrocatalyst shows a high power density (145 mW·cm−2) and good cycle performance.


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Mn, N co-doped Co nanoparticles/porous carbon as air cathode for highly efficient rechargeable Zn-air batteries

Show Author's information Hanzhen Zheng1,§, Fei Ma1,§, Hongcen Yang1, Xiaogang Wu1, Rui Wang1, Dali Jia1, Zhixia Wang1, Niandi Lu1, Fen Ran2, Shanglong Peng1( )
National & Local Joint Engineering Laboratory for Optical Conversion Materials and Technology, School of Physical Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Processing and Recycling of Non-ferrous Metals, School of Material Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou 730050, China

§Hanzhen Zheng and Fei Ma contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are generally catalyzed by precious metals (Pt) and metal oxides (IrO2) which still have many shortages including expensive price, poor selectivity and undesirable stability. In this work, we report a Mn0-doped CoNx on N-doped porous carbon (Mn-CoNx/N-PC) composite from carbonizing metal-organic framework (MOF) derivative as the dual-functional catalyst to boost both the ORR and OER performances. Owing to the strong coordination effect between nitrogen and metal elements, the introduction of N can obviously improve the content of Co-N-C active sites for ORR. Meanwhile, the Mn-doping significantly regulates the electronic structure of the Co element and increases the content of Co0 which provide efficient OER active sites. Mn-CoNx/N-PC catalyst delivers super dual-functional activity with a half-wave potential of 0.85 V, better than the 20% Pt/C catalyst (0.82 V). When used in Zn-air batteries for testing, Mn-CoNx/N-PC electrocatalyst shows a high power density (145 mW·cm−2) and good cycle performance.

Keywords: Zn-air batteries, bifunctional electrocatalysts, Co-N-C, Mn-doped

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 01 July 2021
Revised: 11 August 2021
Accepted: 19 August 2021
Published: 15 September 2021
Issue date: March 2022

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Gansu Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 17JR5RA198), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. lzujbky-2018-119, lzujbky-2018-ct08, and lzujbky-2019-it23), Key Areas Scientific and Technological Research Projects in Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (No. 2018AB004), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11975114), Cooperation project of Gansu Academy of Sciences(No. 2020HZ-2), the fund of State Key Laboratory of Advanced Processing and Recycling of Non-ferrous Metals (No. SKLAB02019001) and Cooperation project of Gansu Academy of Sciences (No. 2020HZ-2).

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