Fengying
Pan‡
a,
Ziyan
Shen‡
a,
Xianjun
Cao
a,
Yuxia
Zhang
b,
Cheng
Gong
a,
Jinhu
Wu
a,
Jinqiang
Zhang
*c,
Hao
Liu
*c,
Xiaowei
Li
*d and
Yufei
Zhao
*ac
aJoint International Laboratory on Environmental and Energy Frontier Materials, School of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, P. R. China. E-mail: yufei-zhao@shu.edu.cn
bSchool of Materials Science and Engineering, Shijiazhuang Tiedao University, Shijiazhuang 050043, P. R. China
cCentre for Clean Energy Technology, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia. E-mail: Jinqiang.Zhang@uts.edu.au; Hao.liu@uts.edu.au
dSchool of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Organic Compound Pollution Control Engineering, Ministry of Education, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, P. R. China. E-mail: lixiaowei419@shu.edu.cn
First published on 4th April 2024
The exploration of powerful, efficient and precious metal-free electrocatalysts for facilitating the sluggish kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is a crucial endeavor in the development and application of energy conversion and storage devices. Herein, we have rationally designed and synthesized bimetallic CoFe species consisting of CoFe nanoparticles and atomically dispersed dual atoms anchored on an ordered mesoporous carbon matrix (CoFe/NC) as highly efficient ORR electrocatalysts. The pyrolyzation temperature for CoFe/NC plays a vital role in regulating the morphology and composition of both the carbon matrix and CoFe species. The optimized CoFe/NC-750 exhibits a favorable ORR performance in 0.1 M KOH with a high half-wave potential (E1/2) of 0.87 V vs. RHE, excellent tolerance to methanol and remarkable durability (no obvious decrease in E1/2 value after 3000 cycles), all of which are superior to the performance of commercial Pt/C. Experimental measurements and density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the improved ORR performance of CoFe/NC-750 is mainly attributed to the electronic structure of atomically dispersed Fe active sites modulated by the surrounding CoFe alloys and Co single atoms, which accelerates the dissociation and reduction of intermediate OH* species and promotes the ORR process.
Recently, nitrogen-stabilized transition metal species (TM–NX) supported by carbon substrates have been proved to be one of the most promising electrocatalyst alternatives owing to their maximized metal atom utilization and tunable electronic properties.8–11 Among them, Fe–N–C electrocatalysts have exhibited high catalytic activity with Fe–N coordination bonds as ORR active sites.12,13 It has been demonstrated that their ORR activity can be further boosted by altering their electronic structure, which highly affects the binding energy with the ORR intermediates.14 For instance, the introduction of other types of heteroatoms (e.g., S, P, B) can tune and enhance the kinetic activity of catalytic sites (M–S1N3, P/Fe–N–C) by regulating their electron-withdrawing/donating properties.15,16 Bimetallic sites incorporating another metal species endowed with synergistic properties have great potential to accelerate ORR kinetics. The intrinsic ORR activity of the active metal species of SACs follows the order of Fe > Co > Cu > Mn > Ni.17–19 Therefore, incorporating Co species into Fe–N–C electrocatalysts and forming adjacent metal atoms, greatly improves the structural adjustability. The chemical interaction between Fe and Co atoms leads to a unique electronic structure and optimizes the ORR performance. For instance, FeN3–CoN3 active sites highly promote the cleavage of O–O bonds by bridge-cis adsorption of O-containing intermediates in the ORR process. In addition, the insertion of atomic clusters into atomically dispersed M–N–C substrates (e.g., FeAC@FeSA–N–C, Fe–ACSA@NC, Co–ACSA@NC, and Ni–ACSA@NC) inspired electron redistribution between the metal centers in M–N–C and the carbon support, regulating the bonding length of M–N to promote the desorption of intermediates during the ORR process.20–22 Furthermore, the introduction of nanoparticles near the atomically dispersed M–N–C (M/M–NX) is also promising to optimize the ORR performance.23–25 For instance, M/M–NX composite sites (e.g., M/FeCo–SAs–N–C and FeN3/Fe NPs) enhanced the oxygen adsorption capability and prolonged the length of the O–O bond, making the O–O bond easily fracture and thereby enhance ORR catalytic activity.26,27 Apart from collaborating with M–N–C, the incorporated heteroatoms, clusters or nanoparticles may also provide additional active sites or protect the M–N–C active site from poisoning,28,29 further boosting the catalytic activity and stability. However, an in-depth understanding of the interaction between the active sites and reactants to accelerate the ORR kinetics is still heavily hampered by the heterogeneity of the structure and composition of the electrocatalysts,6,27 while establishing a definitive correlation between the atomic structure and the ORR catalytic performance remains a challenge.30,31
Herein, we designed a template-assisted method to prepare highly efficient ORR electrocatalysts composed of an ordered mesoporous carbon and bimetallic CoFe species. The pyrolysis temperature for CoFe/NC highly regulates the properties of the carbon matrix and CoFe species. The optimized CoFe/NC-750 exhibits an ordered porous architecture, and the coexistence of atomically dispersed Co/Fe atoms and CoFe alloys, which ensure efficient mass transport and modulation of active sites for the ORR. As a result, CoFe/NC-750 exhibited an excellent ORR performance under alkaline conditions with a high E1/2 value, excellent tolerance to methanol and superior durability, outperforming those of commercial Pt/C and other prepared comparison samples. The boosted ORR performance of CoFe/NC-750 may mainly be contributed to the active sites of atomically dispersed Fe species modulated by the surrounding Co atoms and CoFe alloys, which lowers the energy barrier in the rate-determining step (OH* → OH−), thus accelerating the ORR process.
The ordered mesoporous structure of CoFe/NC-750 derived from the reverse replication of SBA-15 (SEM image in Fig. S1†) has been confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images (Fig. S2†). The high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) image in Fig. 1b further shows that CoFe/NC-750 inherits the rod-like structure with nanoparticles scattered on its surface. The high resolution HAADF-STEM image in Fig. 1c reveals the presence of a well-crystallized nanoparticle structure with lattice fringes of 0.202 nm, corresponding to the (110) facet of the bcc CoFe alloy.33 Meanwhile, numerous bright dots have been observed on the carbon support as shown in Fig. 1d, attributed to the atomically dispersed Co or Fe species. Thus, we have successfully prepared CoFe nanoparticles and CoFe atomically dispersed atoms co-existing on the carbon matrix. The energy dispersion spectrum (EDS) element mapping (Fig. 1e–h) combined with the electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) elemental mapping (Fig. S3†) further validate the uniform distribution of C, N, Co, and Fe elements and the presence of nano-aggregated CoFe metal alloy nanoparticles. The Co and Fe loading on the carbon matrix in CoFe/NC-750 are 5.42 wt% and 1.80 wt%, respectively, derived from inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) measurements.
CoFe/NCs pyrolyzed at different temperatures have also been prepared as comparison materials to investigate the critical role of temperature, denoted as CoFe/NC-T (T = 700 °C, 750 °C, 800 °C, and 850 °C). As shown in Fig. 2a, at a lower temperature of 700 °C, it is obvious to observe the nanoparticles due to their fast formation properties. With the increase of temperature to 750 °C, the co-existence of small nanoparticles and dual atoms has been observed (Fig. 1b–d). When the temperature is further increased to 800 °C, the carbon surface becomes much rougher (Fig. 2a). Many carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are formed due to the catalytic properties of CoFe alloys at higher temperature. More of the organic ligand 2-methylimidazole served as the C source for the growth of CNTs in the presence of metallic alloys at a temperature of 850 °C (forming interconnected CNTs), and eventually destroyed the original ordered structure of CMK-3. Moreover, many fewer nanoparticles were observed for CoFe/NC-800 and CoFe/NC-850, which may be attributed to the quick movement of the metal species at high temperatures, reducing the aggregation properties. The above phenomena indicate that the temperature indeed plays a significant role in the unique morphology and composition. The results of N2 adsorption/desorption isotherms shown in Fig. S5† reveal that CoFe/NC-750 with an ordered mesoporous structure and small nanoparticles exhibited the largest specific surface area of 2109.3 m2 g−1 among all prepared CoFe/NC samples (566.1 m2 g−1 for CoFe/NC-700, 1487.2 m2 g−1 for CoFe/NC-800 and 874.6 m2 g−1 for CoFe/NC-850), which is favorable for mass transport, more exposed active sites and the adsorption/desorption of intermediates.34
The composition and crystal structure of CoFe/NCs have been investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD). As displayed in Fig. 2b, the dominant diffraction peak at 26° for all samples corresponds to the (002) planes of graphitic carbon (JCPDS no. 41-1487).12 Two sharp peaks at around 45° have been observed for CoFe/NCs-700, belonging to the (111) plane of Co and the (110) plane of the CoFe alloy (JCPDS no. 49-1568).33 CoFe/NC-750 exhibited one peak at 45°, corresponding to the (110) plane of the CoFe alloy. In contrast, the peaks for metallic species were almost indiscernible for both CoFe/NC-800 and CoFe/NC-850. The XRD results are consistent with the TEM images shown in Fig. 2a. Fig. 2c shows the Raman spectra of CoFe/NC, and the characteristic peaks at around 1345 and 1585 cm−1 are dictated by the D-band of sp3 defects and the G-band of the sp2 graphite carbon, respectively.35,36 CoFe/NC-750 exhibits an ID/IG intensity ratio of 0.96, which is a little higher than those of CoFe/NC-700 (0.93), CoFe/NC-800 (0.94) and CoFe/NC-850 (0.90). The increased ID/IG ratio suggests that the carbon lattice of CoFe/NC-750 possesses more defects, which may provide additional active sites for the ORR process.
The chemical and electronic states of the as-prepared catalysts have been investigated using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. The XPS survey spectra in Fig. S6† show that all CoFe/NC samples are composed of C, N, O, Fe and Co elements. The high-resolution N 1s segments of CoFe/NCs shown in Fig. 2d are deconvoluted into five peaks centered at approximately ∼398, ∼399, ∼400, ∼401 and ∼402 eV, which are attributed to pyridinic N, metal-coordinated nitrogen (M–N), pyrrolic N, graphitic N and oxidized N, respectively, revealing the successful incorporation of N doping in CoFe/NC.37,38 The presence of M–N reveals the coordination of the N atom with the Fe or Co atom.39 Moreover, the intensities of M–N peaks change significantly with temperature. CoFe/NC-750, CoFe/NC-800 and CoFe/NC-850 exhibited much higher peak intensity compared to that of CoFe/NC-700, indicating that many more Co/Fe species were stabilized by N atoms on increasing the temperature, which is consistent with the TEM/XRD results that metal species move faster with increasing temperature, eventually changing from particles to single atoms.40 Analogously, the peak intensity of graphitic N exhibits a similar trend to that of M–N, indicating high temperature in favor of the formation of graphitic N. The high-resolution Co 2p spectra of CoFe/NC-700 and CoFe/NC-750 (Fig. 2e) show two distinct peaks, belonging to Co 2p3/2 and Co 2p1/2. These peaks can be further deconvoluted into four pairs of peaks located at ∼778/∼793 eV, ∼781/∼796 eV, ∼783/∼799 eV, and ∼786/∼802 eV, corresponding to Co 2p3/2 and Co 2p1/2 of metallic Co (Co0), Co3+, Co2+ and the satellite peaks, respectively,41 confirming the coexistence of atomic and metallic states of Co species in both CoFe/NC-700 and CoFe/NC-750. Moreover, the peak intensity of metallic Co decreased from that of CoFe/NC-700 to CoFe/NC-750. No corresponding peak of Co0 was observed in spectra for either CoFe/NC-800 or CoFe/NC-850, further demonstrating the transition from the metal state (Co0) to the atomic state (Co3+/Co2+) at high temperatures. The results of high-resolution Fe 2p spectra in Fig. 2f show a similar trend to that of Co 2p results, revealing the coexistence of the metallic (∼707/∼720 eV) and atomic state of Fe (Fe2+(∼711/∼722 eV) and Fe3+(∼715/∼728 eV)) in CoFe/NC-700 and CoFe/NC-750,42 and merely atomic states of Fe in CoFe/NC-800 and CoFe/NC-850. The above results suggest that the temperature plays an important role in promoting the transformation of the metallic species into atomically dispersed metal species during CoFe preparation, which has great influence on the morphology and composition of CoFe species and thus on the ORR catalytic capability.
The superior ORR catalytic performance of CoFe/NC-750 over CoFe/NCs achieved at other temperatures suggests that the ordered mesoporous structure and CoFe species play essential roles. We further prepared single metal species-based materials through the same synthesis procedure, namely Co/NC-750 and Fe/NC-750, to investigate the advantages of the bimetallic species compared with the single metallic species in improving ORR activity. SEM images in Fig. S9a and S9b† show that Co/NC-750 and Fe/NC-750 maintain a rod-like morphology similar to that of CoFe/NC-750. The structural properties of these materials are further characterized by XRD and Raman measurements. As illustrated in Fig. 4a, the XRD patterns of Co/NC-750 and Fe/NC-750 exhibit dominant characteristic peaks of the graphitic carbon (002) plane at around 26°. No obvious peaks related to metallic Co or Fe species have been observed for Co/NC-750 and Fe/NC-750, which is a different phenomenon from that of CoFe/NC-750, indicating that the solely metallic Co or Fe species may be easily removed by acidic treatment. The Raman spectra in Fig. 4b show a higher ID/IG intensity ratio of CoFe/NC-750, compared to that of Co/NC-750 and Fe/NC-750. Furthermore, N2 adsorption/desorption isotherm results (Fig. S5, S9c and S9d†) reveal that CoFe/NC-750 possesses a higher BET surface area in comparison with Co/NC-750 and Fe/NC-750, contributing to the exposure of more active sites and increased ORR kinetics activity. The ORR test results presented in Fig. 4c and d and Fig. S10† reveal that CoFe/NC-750 exhibits superior Eonset, E1/2 and JK values to those of Co/NC-750 and Fe/NC-750, indicating that the synergistic effect of Co and Fe species contributed to the enhanced electrocatalytic ORR activity. In addition, as shown in Fig. S10,† CoFe/NC-750 exhibits the smallest Tafel slope (83 mV dec−1) compared to those of Co/NC-750 and Fe/NC-750, further demonstrating the faster ORR kinetics of CoFe/NC-750 originating from the presence of bimetallic species.44,45
Footnotes |
† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/d4nr00175c |
‡ Fengying Pan and Ziyan Shen made equal contributions to this work. |
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