Tailored Heterojunction Active Sites for Oxygen Electrocatalyst Promotion in Zinc-Air Batteries

Rechargeable zinc-air batteries (ZABs) are promising energy storage systems due to their low-cost and safety. However, the working principle of ZABs is based on oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which display sluggish kinetic and low stability. Herein, this work proposes a novel method to design a heterogeneous CoP/CoO electrocatalyst on mesopore nanobox carbon/carbon nanotube (CoP/CoO@MNC-CNT) that enriched active sites and synergistic effect. Moreover, the well-defined heterointerfaces could lower the energy barrier for intermediate species adsorption and promote OER and ORR electrochemical performances. The CoP/CoO@MNC-CNT electrocatalyst presents a high half-wave potential of 0.838 V for ORR and a small overpotential of 270 mV for OER. The ZABs-based CoP/CoO@MNC-CNT air-cathode shows an open-circuit voltage of 1.409 V, the long-term cycle life of 500 h with a small voltage difference change of 7.7%. Additionally, the flexible ZABs exhibit highly mechanical stability, demonstrating their application potential in wearable electronic devices.

Automated summary

This work proposes a novel method to design a heterogeneous CoP/CoO electrocatalyst on mesopore nanobox carbon/carbon nanotube (CoP/CoO@MNC-CNT) that enriched active sites and synergistic effect. The well-defined heterointerfaces could lower the energy barrier for intermediate species adsorption and promote OER and ORR electrochemical performances. The ZABs-based CoP/CoO@MNC-CNT air-cathode shows high performance in terms of ORR half-wave potential and OER overpotential, and the flexible ZABs exhibit highly mechanical stability, demonstrating their application potential in wearable electronic devices.