Silver decorated cobalt carbonate to enable high bifunctional activity for oxygen electrocatalysis and rechargeable Zn-air batteries

Rechargeable zinc-air batteries (ZABs) is primarily driven by the couple of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Currently, it is still challenging to develop cost-effective, highly efficient, and robust bifunctional catalysts for ZABs. Herein, a novel silver decorated cobalt carbonate (Ag@CoCO3) hybrid catalyst is proposed as the potential bifunctional catalyst to drive OER and ORR for ZABs. Engineering Ag nanoparticles onto the surface of CoCO3 microsphere not only facilitates the charge transfer, but also modulates the electronic structure, which are beneficial to intrinsic bifunctional activity. As a result, this Ag@CoCO3 catalyst yields a substantially enhanced bifunctionality compared to the pristine CoCO3 catalyst. Moreover, the homemade Ag@CoCO3 based ZABs provides a high peak power density of 146 mW cm(-2), superior to 107 mW cm(-2) for CoCO3 based ZABs and 111 mW cm(-2) for commercial Pt/C-IrO2 based ZABs. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

A novel Ag@CoCO3 hybrid catalyst is proposed to enhance the bifunctionality of ZABs, resulting in significantly improved peak power density.