High Performance Air Breathing Zinc-Air Battery with Pt−Ni and Pt−Co Bifunctional Electrocatalyst on N Activated Mesoporous Carbon

In future perspective, the world demands energy conversion and storage devices with high efficiency, lower cost, reliability and sustainability. Zinc air battery (ZAB) has proven capable as metal anodes for producing such energy, as they are Earth-abundant economical, and environmentally resilient, suitable for efficient domestic and industrial applications. Herein, we developed a catalyst, which serves as an excellent bi-functional cathode catalyst for ZAB. Platinum alloy with the transition metals (nickel and cobalt) supported on the nitrogen doped bio derived high mesoporous carbon using a facile method. This catalyst shows the remarkable performance on both the oxygen reduction reaction and oxygen evolution reaction. Platinum alloy (Pt-Ni and Pt-Co) supported on N-activated bio derived mesoporous carbon (N-MC) shows low over potential and high half wave potential over the commercial catalyst in the oxygen reduction reaction. While performance analysis in in-house designed air breathing ZAB, the outstanding performances are achieved with the specific capacity of 746 mAh g⁻¹ for Pt-Co/N-MC and 726 mAh g⁻¹ for Pt-Ni/N-MC, which surpass the commercial Pt-Ru/C catalyst which shows a specific capacity of 420 mAh g⁻¹. The admirable cycling stability over 110 cycles were observed for Pt-Co/N-MC. Undoubtedly, Pt-Co/N-MC and Pt-Ni/N-MC are promising candidates for bi-functional air cathode catalyst for air breathing zinc air battery.