Authors: Jie Zheng, Chunxu Lai, Wenxuan Chen, Chao Liu, Tenghui Yuan, Jieying Lv, Bote Zhao, Dai Dang, Guifa Long, Tiejun Wang, Xiaopeng Han
Published: 2025-01-13
Source: Full article
AbstractEnhancing the catalytic performance and durability of M‐N─C catalyst is crucial for the efficient operation of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) and Zn‐Air batteries (ZABs). Herein, an approach is developed for the in situ fabrication of a MOFs‐derived porous carbon material, co‐loaded with Co nanoparticles (NPs) and Co‐Nx sites and integrated onto Fe‐doped carbon nanotubes (CNTs), named CoNP/SA‐NC/Fe‐NCNTs. Incorporating polymer‐wrapped CNTs improves MOFs dispersion annealing at high temperature, which amplifies the three‐phase boundary (TPB) by generating much more mesopores and exposing additional active sites within the catalysts layer. Furthermore, density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicate that the presence of Co NPs promotes the conversion of oxygen‐containing intermediates for Co‐Nx sites. The optimized catalysts display a half‐wave potential of 0.9 V (vs RHE) for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and a low overpotential of 327 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline media, which significantly outperforms the counterpart single structure, as well as noble‐metal‐based catalysts. Specifically, the PEMFCs and ZABs derived from CoNP/SA‐NC/Fe‐NCNTs catalyst exhibit power densities of 702 and 192 mW cm−2, respectively. This work offers novel insights into the synthesis of the composited bifunctional carbon materials for ZABs and PEMFCs application.