Prof. Zhao Bin’s Group Makes New Progress in Electrocatalytic Materials for Water Splitting and Zn-air Battery

Recently, Prof. Bin Zhao’s group from school of Materials Science and Engineering published pioneering papers on eletrocatalytical materials for water splitting and Zn-air battery.
In electrocatalysts for water splitting, his group used a strategy of in-situ growth of active materials on conductive support, hetoroatom-doping and plasma phosphorization to expose more active sites and enhance the intrinsic acitivity of metal phosphides. These works titled “Fe-Doped Ni-Co Phosphide Nanoplates with Planar Defects as an Efficient Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Overall water splitting” and “Plasma-assisted synthesis of hierarchical NiCoxPy nanosheets as robust and stable electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction in both acidic and alkaline media” were published in top journals ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2020, 8: 7436. IF: 6.97) and Electrochimica Acta (2020, 331: 135431), respectively. Secondly, they cooperated with Huazhong University of Science and Technology and developed the bi-functional NiFe2O4/VACNT electrocatalyst by supercritical CO2 assisted method, and achieved excellent HER and OER performance in alkaline electrolyte. This work titled “Supercritical CO2-Assisted synthesis of NiFe2O4/vertically-aligned carbon nanotube arrays hybrid as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for efficient overall water splitting” was published in the top journal Carbon (2019, 145: 201. IF: 7.466).

Electrochemical performance of the Fe-NiCoP water electrolyzer

Link to the paper:  https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.0c01467

In electrocatalytic material for Zn-air battery, they cooperated with Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and synthesized the oxygen vacancy-rich NiFeOx-decorated VACNT hybrid, which exhibited both OER and ORR activities. By employing this hybrid as the free-standing air electrode, a rechargeable Zn-air battery was constructed with the high peak power density and ultra-stable cyclability over 1500 hours. This work has been published in the top journal Journal of Materials Chemistry A (2020, 8: 5070. IF: 10.733).

Schematics of NiFeO_x@VACNTs air electrode and application in rechargable Zn-air battery

Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1039/D0TA00554A

The above works were financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China and Shanghai Science and Technology Commission. The first authors were Associate Prof. Ya Yan and postgraduates in Zhao’s group.