Synergistic effect of size-dependent PtZn nanoparticles and zinc single-atom sites for electrochemical ozone production in neutral media

Electrochemical ozone production (EOP) via water electrolysis represents an attractive method for the generation of high-purity O-3 . Herein, the X-PtZn/Zn-N-C electrocatalysts show a strong structural sensitive behavior depends on the size of the PtZn nanoparticles and their EOP activity exhibits a volcano-type dependence for the O-3 performance in neutral media. The 7.7-PtZn/Zn-N-C exhibits EOP current efficiency of 4.2%, and shows the prominent performance in the production of gaseous O-3 with a value of 1647 ppb at 30 min, which is almost 4-fold compared to 2.2-PtZn/Zn-N-C. Based on the experiments and theoretical calculations, the performance of the EOP process was determined by the nanoparticle size-effect and the synergistic effect between the PtZn nanoparticles and atomically dispersed Zn-N-C. Furthermore, the five membered cyclic structure of O-3 can be stabilized between the PtZn nanoparticle and the Zn-N-C support, indicating that O-3 is produced at the interface. (c) 2020 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science Press. All rights reserved.