Enhanced oxygen reduction with single-atomic-site iron catalysts for a zinc-air battery and hydrogen-air fuel cell
Authors: Lirong Zheng
Weng-Chon Cheong
Haolin Tang
Alexandre I Rykov
Wenxing Chen
Zhongbin Zhuang
Qing Peng
Yuanjun Chen
Dingsheng Wang
Yadong Li
Rongan Shen
Shichang Cai
Shufang Ji
Shu Zhao
Juncai Dong
Xiaodong Wen
Chen Chen
Journal: Nature Communications (2018)
Discipline: Multidisciplinary
Keywords: Electrocatalysts; Oxygen reduction reaction; Single iron atomic sites; Nitrogen; Phosphorus
Affiliations: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, 100084, Beijing, China., Beijing Guyue New Materials Research Institute, Beijing University of Technology, 100124, Beijing, China., Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China., State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 030001, Taiyuan, China., Mössbauer Effect Data Center, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 116023, Dalian, China., State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, 430070, Wuhan, China., State Key Lab of Organic-Inorganic Composites and Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, 100029, Beijing, China., Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, 100084, Beijing, China. .

Abstract:  Efficient, durable and inexpensive electrocatalysts that accelerate sluggish oxygen reduction reaction kinetics and achieve high-performance are highly desirable. Here we develop a strategy to fabricate a catalyst comprised of single iron atomic sites supported on a nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur co-doped hollow carbon polyhedron from a metal-organic framework@polymer composite. The polymer-based coating facilitates the construction of a hollow structure via the Kirkendall effect and electronic modulation of an active metal center by long-range interaction with sulfur and phosphorus. Benefiting from structure functionalities and electronic control of a single-atom iron active center, the catalyst shows a remarkable performance with enhanced kinetics and activity for oxygen reduction in both alkaline and acid media. Moreover, the catalyst shows promise for substitution of expensive platinum to drive the cathodic oxygen reduction reaction in zinc-air batteries and hydrogen-air fuel cells. 

Retracted: No

PubPeer comments:
 In supplementary Figure 45b and 47b, the XRD patterns (even noise background) for Cu-SAs NPS-HC and Ir-SAs NPS-HC is totally same, how this happened for the two different samples? ![file] , 
 We sincerely appreciate your careful review. We have checked the raw data of these two XRD figures. The raw XRD data of Ir-SAs NPS-HC is different from that of Cu-SAs NPS-HC. The raw XRD data and the corresponding project file from Origin are present in the attachments. Since the layouts of Supplementary Figure 45 and Supplementary Figure 47 are very similar, Supplementary Figure 45 was used as the template of these graphs. When we intended to place the XRD figure of Supplementary Figure 47b, due to the operation error, the picture was not replaced with the XRD figure of Ir-SAs NPS-HC, leading to the same XRD signal in Supplementary Figure 45b and Supplementary Figure 47b. We feel very sorry for this mistake. The corrected figures are shown below. As shown in the updated Supplementary Figure 47b, no obvious signals for metallic Ir species are observed, suggesting the high dispersion of Ir species. EDS mappings show the homogeneous distribution of Ir, C, N, P, and S elements throughout the entire hollow shell (Supplementary Figure 47c). Furthermore, the aberration-corrected HAADF-STEM image demonstrates that Ir species are atomically dispersed in Ir-SAs NPS-HC (Supplementary Figure 47d). The updated XRD result in Supplementary Figure 47b still supports the original conclusion in our manuscript that our synthetic method can be extended to other metal single-atom catalysts. And we have emailed the editor of Nature Communications for errata for this picture. Thank you again for pointing out this serious mistake. We feel very sorry for our lack of seriousness during the data processing. (Attachment link: https: pan.baidu.com s 1RZHwLvDBEy6xeSBu32zH7w Password:1234)![file] ,