Abstract
Developing highly active and durable catalysts for zinc-air batteries (ZAB) is critical for energy conversion and storage. Herein, we prepared Fe-N-C catalysts at a kilogram scale by the commercial VariPore™ method and the effect of synthesis conditions on the catalyst performance at ZAB air electrode was investigated. The results show the PA-450-HT exhibits excellent electrocatalytic activity toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and it is the most suitable catalyst for primary ZAB with the galvanostatic polarization discharge peak power density of 149 mW cm−2, outperforming commercial Pt-Ru/C catalysts. Additionally, the NCB-600-HT catalyst displays the half-wave potential of 0.87 V vs. RHE for ORR and ∆E value of 0.81 V (indicating outstanding ORR and OER reversibility) and exhibits excellent charge-discharge cycling durability similar to NCB-550-LT around 160 h for the secondary ZAB. This work reports outstanding bifunctional Fe-N-C catalysts for rechargeable ZAB at mass production for the first time.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 142126 |
| Journal | Electrochimica Acta |
| Volume | 446 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 1 2023 |
Funding
This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05–00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). The present study was financially supported by the Estonian Research Council (grants PRG723 and PRG1509 ) and the M-ERA.Net project “C-MOF.cell” (SLTKT20445). This research was also supported by the EU through the European Regional Development Fund ( TK141 “Advanced materials and high-technology devices for energy recuperation systems” and TK143 “Molecular cell engineering”). We would like to thank Dr. Arvo Kikas from the Institute of Physics of the University of Tartu for his expertise in the analysis of XPS results. AS and BZ gratefully acknowledge financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Technologies Office (HFTO), FY2018 Hydrogen and Fuel Cell R&D FOA , Award Number DE-EE0008419 .
Keywords
- Bifunctional catalysts
- Fe-N-C catalyst
- Oxygen evolution reaction
- Oxygen reduction reaction
- Zinc-air battery