A multifunctional cobalt iron sulfide electrocatalyst for high performance Zn-air batteries and overall water splitting

Developing a highly efficient, inexpensive, and robust catalyst with multifunctional activity is pivotal and central to regenerative greener metal-air batteries and fuel cells. However, it is still a big challenge to achieve the integration of three functions in a single catalyst. Herein, we report a facile, template-free and scalable strategy to synthesize nanorod embedded wheat-grain CoFe(3:1)S-2 in conjunction with nitrogen-containing carbon by a simple single-step hydrothermal reaction. The synthesized catalyst demonstrates remarkable pH-universal hydrogen evolution activity and requires only 98, 117, and 123 mV overpotential in 0.5 M H2SO4, 1 M KOH and 1 M PBS to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm(-2). The optimized catalyst also exhibits a remarkable bifunctional oxygen activity and when CoFe(3:1)S-2 is used as an air cathode, it demonstrates a very high peak power density of 387 mW cm(-2) and energy density of 1008 W h kg(-1) with prolonged cycling stability. Besides, a water electrolyzer assembled using a CoFe(3:1)S-2 based anode and cathode affords a current density of 10 mA cm(-2) at a low cell potential of 1.584 V. When two Zn-air batteries are connected in series, they successfully powered overall water splitting, manifesting the feasibility of CoFe(3:1)S-2 for various energy conversion and storage systems.

Automated summary

This article presents a simple method to synthesize nanorod embedded wheat-grain CoFe(3:1)S-2 catalyst and demonstrates its excellent performance in hydrogen evolution and oxygen reduction reactions through experiments. In addition, the catalyst also exhibits good electrochemical properties in water electrolysis and zinc-air batteries. These results highlight the importance of this catalyst in the field of energy conversion and storage.