Longevous Cycling of Rechargeable Zn-Air Battery Enabled by "Raisin-Bread" Cobalt Oxynitride/Porous Carbon Hybrid Electrocatalysts.

Developing commercially viable electrocatalyst lies at the research hotspot of rechargeable Zn-air batteries, but it is still challenging to meet the requirements of energy efficiency and durability in realistic applications. Strategic material design is critical to addressing its drawbacks in terms of sluggish kinetics of oxygen reactions and limited battery lifespan. Herein, a "raisin-bread" architecture is designed for a hybrid catalyst constituting cobalt nitride as the core nanoparticle with thin oxidized coverings, which is further deposited within porous carbon aerogel. Based on synchrotron-based characterizations, this hybrid provides oxygen vacancies and Co-Nx -C sites as the active sites, resulting from a strong coupling between CoOx Ny nanoparticles and 3D conductive carbon scaffolds. Compared to the oxide reference, it performs enhanced stability in harsh electrocatalytic environments, highlighting the benefits of the oxynitride. Furthermore, the 3D conductive scaffolds improve charge/mass transportation and boost durability of these active sites. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the introduced N species into hybrid can synergistically tune the d-band center of cobalt and improve its bifunctional activity. As a result, the obtained air cathode exhibits bifunctional overpotential of 0.65 V and a battery lifetime exceeding 1350 h, which sets a new record for rechargeable Zn-air battery reported so far.

How to Change the Reaction Chemistry on Nonprecious Metal Oxide Nanostructure Materials for Electrocatalytic Oxidation of Biomass-Derived Glycerol to Renewable Chemicals.

Au and Pt are well-known catalysts for electrocatalytic oxidation of biomass-derived glycerol. Although some nonprecious-metal-based materials to replace the costly Au and Pt are used for this reaction, the fundamental question of how the nonprecious catalysts affect the reaction chemistry and mechanism compared to Au and Pt catalysts is still unanswered. In this work, both experimental and computational methods are used to understand how and why the reaction performance and chemistry for the electrocatalytic glycerol oxidation reaction (EGOR) change with electrochemically-synthesized CuCo-oxide, Cu-oxide, and Co-oxide catalysts compared to conventional Au and Pt catalysts. The Au and Pt catalysts generate major glyceric acid and glycolic acid products from the EGOR. Interestingly, the prepared Cu-based oxides produce glycolic acid and formic acid with high selectivity of about 90.0%. This different reaction chemistry is related to the enhanced ability of CC bond cleavage on the Cu-based oxide materials. The density functional theory calculations demonstrate that the formic acids are mainly formed on the Cu-based oxide surfaces rather than in the process of glycolic acid formation in the free energy diagram. This study provides critical scientific insights into developing future nonprecious-based materials for electrochemical biomass conversions.

Fuel cell performance improvement via the steric effect of a hydrocarbon-based binder for cathode in proton exchange membrane fuel cells.

In this study, a sulfonated poly(ether sulfone) having cardo-type fluorenyl groups (FL-SPES) was investigated as a cathodic binder to improve fuel cell performance via increased the oxygen diffusion in the cathode. The maximum power density achieved by using the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) prepared with FL-SPES with a low ion exchange capacity (IEC) of 1.31 meq g-1 was 520 mW cm-2, which is more than twice as high as that of BP-SPES (210 mW cm-2) having typical biphenyl groups with a similar IEC. At high IEC of 1.55 meq g-1, the power density obtained by using BP-SPES was improved to 454 mW cm-2 but remained lower than that of FL-SPES. In addition, although the IEC, swelling degree, and specific resistance were similar to each other, the gas permeability of FL-SPES was improved by approximately three times compared to that of BP-SPES. The steric structure of cardo-type FL-SPES increased the free volume between the polymer backbones, leading to an increase in gas transfer. Consequently, oxygen diffusion was promoted at the cathode, resulting in improved fuel cell performance.

First-principles database driven computational neural network approach to the discovery of active ternary nanocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction.

An elegant machine-learning-based algorithm was applied to study the thermo-electrochemical properties of ternary nanocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). High-dimensional neural network potentials (NNPs) for the interactions among the components were parameterized from big dataset established by first-principles density functional theory calculations. The NNPs were then incorporated with Monte Carlo (MC) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to identify not only active, but also electrochemically stable nanocatalysts for ORR in acidic solution. The effects of surface strain caused by selective segregation of certain components on the catalytic performance were accurately characterized. The computationally efficient and precise approach proposes a promising ORR candidate: 2.6 nm icosahedron comprising 60% of Pt and 40% Ni/Cu. Our methodology can be applied for high-throughput screening and designing of key functional nanomaterials to drastically enhance the performance of various electrochemical systems.

Self-assembled nitrogen-doped fullerenes and their catalysis for fuel cell and rechargeable metal-air battery applications.

In this study, we report self-assembled nitrogen-doped fullerenes (N-fullerene) as non-precious catalysts, which are active for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and thus applicable for energy conversion and storage devices such as fuel cells and metal-air battery systems. We screen the best N-fullerene catalyst at the nitrogen doping level of 10 at%, not at the previously known doping level of 5 or 20 at% for graphene. We identify that the compressive surface strain induced by doped nitrogen plays a key role in the fine-tuning of catalytic activity.

A New Family of Perovskite Catalysts for Oxygen-Evolution Reaction in Alkaline Media: BaNiO3 and BaNi(0.83)O(2.5).

Establishment of a sustainable energy society has been strong driving force to develop cost-effective and highly active catalysts for energy conversion and storage devices such as metal-air batteries and electrochemical water splitting systems. This is because the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), a vital reaction for the operation, is substantially sluggish even with precious metals-based catalysts. Here, we show for the first time that a hexagonal perovskite, BaNiO3, can be a highly functional catalyst for OER in alkaline media. We demonstrate that the BaNiO3 performs OER activity at least an order of magnitude higher than an IrO2 catalyst. Using integrated density functional theory calculations and experimental validations, we unveil that the underlying mechanism originates from structural transformation from BaNiO3 to BaNi(0.83)O(2.5) (Ba6Ni5O15) over the OER cycling process.