Bioinspired copper catalyst effective for both reduction and evolution of oxygen

Jiong Wang, Kang Wang, Feng-Bin Wang and Xing-Hua Xia ()
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Jiong Wang: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China
Kang Wang: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China
Feng-Bin Wang: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China
Xing-Hua Xia: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract In many green electrochemical energy devices, the conversion between oxygen and water suffers from high potential loss due to the difficulty in decreasing activation energy. Overcoming this issue requires full understanding of global reactions and development of strategies in efficient catalyst design. Here we report an active copper nanocomposite, inspired by natural coordination environments of catalytic sites in an enzyme, which catalyzes oxygen reduction/evolution at potentials closely approaching standard potential. Such performances are related to the imperfect coordination configuration of the copper(II) active site whose electron density is tuned by neighbouring copper(0) and nitrogen ligands incorporated in graphene. The electron transfer number of oxygen reduction is estimated by monitoring the redox of hydrogen peroxide, which is determined by the overpotential and electrolyte pH. An in situ fluorescence spectroelectrochemistry reveals that hydroxyl radical is the common intermediate for the electrochemical conversion between oxygen and water.

Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6285

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