Abstract
Dual-metal catalysts with synergistic effect exhibit enormous potential for sustainable electrocatalytic applications and mechanism research. Compared with mono-metal-site catalysts, dual-metal-site catalysts exhibit higher efficiency for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) due to reduced energy barrier of the process involving proton-coupled multi-electron transfer. Herein, we construct dual-metal Fe-Co sites coordinated with nitrogen in graphene (FeCo-NG), which exhibits high OER performance with onset overpotential of only 126 mV and Tafel slope of 120 mV·dec−1, showing that the rate-determining step is controlled by the single-electron transfer step. Theoretical calculations reveal that the FeN4 site exhibits lower OER overpotential than the CoN4 site due to appropriate adsorption energy of OOH* on the former, while the O* adsorbed on the adjacent Co site could stabilize the OOH* on the FeN4 site through hydrogen bond interaction.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22075099 and 31971322), the Education Department of Jilin Province (Nos. JJKH20220967KJ and JJKH20220968CY), the Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province (No. 20220101051JC), the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (No. D5110220052), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. D5000210743), and Bei**g Municipal Health Commission (No. 2021-1G-1191).
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Tang, T., Duan, Z., Baimanov, D. et al. Synergy between isolated Fe and Co sites accelerates oxygen evolution. Nano Res. 16, 2218–2223 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5001-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5001-3