Molecular iron phthalocyanines anchoring onto ZIF-67-derived cobalt-carbon nanomaterials as bifunctional oxygen catalysts
摘要
Both oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are crucial for advancing the industrial application of fuel cells and metal-air batteries. This paper reports a bifunctional oxygen catalyst (CoNC@FePc) synthesized by anchoring FePc molecules onto cobalt nanoparticles embedded within a Co-ZIF-derived nitrogen-doped carbon matrix (CoNC). By leveraging the significant electron transfer between Co nanoparticles and FePc molecules, the synthesized catalyst demonstrated outstanding performance for both ORR and OER, further validated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The catalyst achieved a half-wave potential of 0.87 V for ORR and a low overpotential of 314 mV at 10 mA/cm2 for OER, surpassing the performance of commercial Pt/C and RuO2, respectively. Additionally, the rechargeable zinc-air batteries incorporating CoNC@FePc exhibited a remarkable peak power density of 150.2 mW/cm2 and maintained outstanding cyclic stability for over 100 h. This study offers a straightforward approach to improving the bifunctional oxygen electrocatalytic performance of metal phthalocyanine-based catalysts.