Sustainability Perspective-Oriented Synthetic Strategy for Zinc Single-Atom Catalysts Boosting Electrocatalytic Reduction of Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen

作者：Nan Wang, Zhenhua Liu, Jingyuan Ma, Jingju Liu, Peng Zhou, Yuguang Chao, Chong‐Bo Ma, Xiangjie Bo, Jian Liu, Yashuang Hei, Yanni Bi, Mimi Sun, Mengzhu Cao, Hucai Zhang, Fengqin Chang, Hsing‐Lin Wang, Ping Xu, Zongqian Hu, Jing Bai, Hao Sun, Guangzhi Hu, Ming Zhou · 发表于：ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1021/acssuschemeng.0c05158 · 被引用次数：50 · 研究领域：Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion、CO2 Reduction Techniques and Catalysts、Advanced battery technologies research

Green and sustainable electrochemical conversion and storage devices possess the nature to repress a negative effect on sustainability during energy conversion and storage. However, the sustainability of devices’ components themselves (e.g., raw material abundance, eco-friendliness, and recycling) is often ignored, which may damage the environment and limit devices’ practical applicability. Herein, guided by the concept of sustainability, a sustainable strategy is reported to synthesize the very cheap single zinc atoms dispersed on nitrogen-doped hierarchically porous carbon (SA-Zn-NHPC) with minimized environmental expense by employing abundant natural apples, natural egg whites, and relatively non-toxic ZnCl 2 as raw materials. Theory calculations and experiments prove that Zn-N 4 within SA-Zn-NHPC is responsible for superior CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) activity with high CO Faradaic efficiency (96%) at low overpotential (0.33 V) and outstanding O 2 reduction reaction (ORR) activity with high half-wave potential (0.87 V) and high onset potential (1.00 V), which are among the best performance of single-atom catalysts. Additionally, remarkable activity and high stability of SA-Zn-NHPC for CO 2 RR and ORR as well as ultralow feedstock cost would render the recycling procedure for end-of-life catalysts (e.g., Pt within fuel cells) unrequired. The sustainability perspective-oriented strategy will bring major advances in both economical energy cost and environment protectio...