An Isolated Zinc–Cobalt Atomic Pair for Highly Active and Durable Oxygen Reduction

Abstract A competitive complexation strategy has been developed to construct a novel electrocatalyst with Zn‐Co atomic pairs coordinated on N doped carbon support (Zn/CoN‐C). Such architecture offers enhanced binding ability of O 2 , significantly elongates the O−O length (from 1.23 Å to 1.42 Å), and thus facilitates the cleavage of O−O bond, showing a theoretical overpotential of 0.335 V during ORR process. As a result, the Zn/CoN‐C catalyst exhibits outstanding ORR performance in both alkaline and acid conditions with a half‐wave potential of 0.861 and 0.796 V respectively. The in situ XANES analysis suggests Co as the active center during the ORR. The assembled zinc–air battery with Zn/CoN‐C as cathode…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China
• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China-Yunnan Joint Fund

  Award: 51774253