The graphene-supported Lanthanum oxide cluster as efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst for oxygen reaction

The development of bifunctional oxygen electrode electrocatalysis for both the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) plays a vital role in the solution of the energy crisis as well as the environmental pollution. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential of graphene-supported lanthanum oxide clusters (La2O3-Gra) as a bifunctional electrocatalyst; the results show that the optimal catalytic site (up-down1) of the most stable configuration (O-Gra-1) modified by OH group shows outstanding bifunctional catalytic activity with eta ORR of 0.51 V and eta OER of 0.52 V, which can be compared to the commercial Pt-based ORR catalysts and the Ru/Ir-oxides OER catalysts. Furthermore, there is a strong scale-dependent relationship between the adsorption free energy (Delta Gads) of reaction intermediates, resulting in volcano plots between the catalytic activity and Delta Gads, which provides a valuable description for future performance prediction of structurally similar catalysts.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the potential of graphene-supported lanthanum oxide clusters (La2O3-Gra) as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for both the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The results show that the optimal catalytic site (up-down1) of the most stable configuration (O-Gra-1) modified by OH group exhibits outstanding bifunctional catalytic activity with eta ORR of 0.51 V and eta OER of 0.52 V, which can be compared to commercial Pt-based ORR catalysts and Ru/Ir-oxides OER catalysts. Furthermore, a strong scale-dependent relationship between the adsorption free energy (Delta Gads) of reaction intermediates is observed, leading to volcano plots between catalytic activity and Delta Gads, providing a valuable description for future performance prediction of structurally similar catalysts.