Pyridinic NB pair-doped carbon microspheres with refined hierarchical architectures for rechargeable zinc-air batteries

Wenhao Chen, Xinxin Pi, Zhibin Qu, Yanhui Li, Jian Li, Zhiyang Li, Qiuju Du, Xiaoyong Lai, Yanzhi Xia and Fei Sun

Applied Energy, 2025, vol. 377, issue PA, No S0306261924018944

Abstract: Refined architectures are of vital importance in determining the electrocatalytic activity of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, pyridinic NB pair doped carbon microspheres (NB-CMS) with hierarchical micropore-mesopore structure are prepared via a SiO2 hard template assisted CO2 activation strategy. The pyridinic NB pair accounts for ≈ 59.9 % of all N species in NB-CMS, accelerating the ORR process with onset potential (0.996 V) and half-wave potential (0.889 V). Meanwhile, the NB-CMS also exhibits high OER performance with overpotential of 384 mV at 10 mA cm−2. The assembled Zinc-air battery exhibits maximum power density of 134 mW cm−2 and long-term charging and discharging stability over 358 h. Density functional theory (DFT) simulations reveal that the pyridinic NB pair exhibits the highest electrocatalytic performance in dual-functional catalysis, owing to the highest charge density and readily accepts electrons from *OOH adsorbate of N active site neighboring B.

Keywords: Carbon microspheres; Carbon-based electrocatalyst; Heteroatomic doping; Oxygen reduction reaction; Oxygen evolution reaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124511

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