Cu Regulating the Bifunctional Activity of Co-O Sites for the High-Performance Rechargeable Zinc-Air Battery

The rational design of cost-effective and highly active electrocatalysts becomes the crucial energy storage technology to boost the kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which hinders the large-scale application of metal-air batteries under the situation of increasingly pressing energy anxiety. Herein, the Co-based ZIF introduced the moderate amount of Cu 2+ -derived Cu/Co metal nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in carbon frameworks after high-temperature calcination. The Co-O bond on the surface of Co nanoparticles is modulated by adjacent Cu nanoparticles with the surface Cu-O bonds. The resulted increase of the Co 2+ /Co 3+ ratio in 0.1CuCo-NC enhances the ORR/OER bifunctional catalytic kinetics along with the Δ E of 0.639 V. In situ Raman spectra of the catalyst on the three-electrode system as well as in the driven zinc-air battery (ZAB) show that the Co-O active sites regulated by Cu nanoparticles with Cu-O bonds maintain a periodic lattice expansion and compression during discharging and charging. The zinc-air battery based on 0.1CuCo-NC has a peak power density of up to 198.3 mW cm –2, a mass-specific capacity of 798.2 mAh g –1, and a cycling stability of 923 h at room temperature. This work makes up the research gap of a Co-based metal–organic framework (MOF)-derived catalyst regulated by a transition metal.