Identifying the structure of Zn-N2 active sites and structural activation

Feng Li, Yunfei Bu (), Gao-Feng Han, Hyuk-Jun Noh, Seok-Jin Kim, Ishfaq Ahmad, Yalin Lu, Peng Zhang, Hu Young Jeong (), Zhengping Fu (), Qin Zhong and Jong-Beom Baek ()
Additional contact information
Feng Li: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST
Yunfei Bu: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
Gao-Feng Han: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST
Hyuk-Jun Noh: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST
Seok-Jin Kim: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST
Ishfaq Ahmad: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST
Yalin Lu: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China
Peng Zhang: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University
Hu Young Jeong: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)
Zhengping Fu: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China
Qin Zhong: Nanjing University of Science and Technology
Jong-Beom Baek: Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Identification of active sites is one of the main obstacles to rational design of catalysts for diverse applications. Fundamental insight into the identification of the structure of active sites and structural contributions for catalytic performance are still lacking. Recently, X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and density functional theory (DFT) provide important tools to disclose the electronic, geometric and catalytic natures of active sites. Herein, we demonstrate the structural identification of Zn-N2 active sites with both experimental/theoretical X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra. Further DFT calculations reveal that the oxygen species activation on Zn-N2 active sites is significantly enhanced, which can accelerate the reduction of oxygen with high selectivity, according well with the experimental results. This work highlights the identification and investigation of Zn-N2 active sites, providing a regular principle to obtain deep insight into the nature of catalysts for various catalytic applications.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10622-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-10622-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10622-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().