Conductive Porous Network of Metal-Organic Frameworks Derived Cobalt-Nitrogen-doped Carbon with the Assistance of Carbon Nanohorns as Electrocatalysts for Zinc-Air Batteries

Herein, we report a new electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction derived from a bimetallic metal-organic framework and single-walled carbon nanohorns. Owing to the 3D conductive network offered by the nanohorns, this type of catalyst exhibits comparable performance with the commercial 20% Pt/C catalyst as well as excellent durability and methanol tolerance at the half-cell test in an alkaline medium. Moreover, the new electrocatalyst shows higher peak power density (185 mW cm(-2)) than that of Pt/C (160 mW cm(-2)) in addition to a comparable stability in a real Zn-air battery test. A correlation between the value of the peak power densities and pore structures of some parallel samples is studied in detail.