Research team of Yang Minghui of Ningbo Institute of materials has made new progress in oxygen reduction catalyst

Catalyst materials play an important role in most of the electrochemical energy conversion devices, which guarantee the efficient energy conversion The ubiquitous oxygen in the atmosphere is a kind of common oxidant, so oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is widely used in energy equipment, such as fuel cell, metal air cell, etc At present, the most commonly used orr catalyst is still Pt based catalyst However, its high price and rarity, as well as the instability in the reaction environment, all urge the researchers in related fields to find more suitable non noble metal catalysts as the substitute of Pt based catalysts Among them, metal-n / C catalyst materials have been widely studied in recent years, and are considered to be the most promising alternative to precious metals However, the problems of high cost, instability, easy deactivation and less active sites of this kind of related materials have always puzzled its practical application As a kind of common metal gap compounds, metal nitrides have excellent electronic conductivity due to their special electronic structure and metal like properties Its corrosion resistance, thermal stability and electrochemical stability make this kind of materials have great potential in the field of electrochemical catalysis Yang Minghui, researcher of Ningbo Institute of materials technology and engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences and his research team have been devoted to the research of metal nitrides and their multifunctional applications including electrocatalysis for many years As early as early as 2011, Yang Minghui discovered a simple solid-solid separation method to synthesize mesoporous metal nitrides with large specific surface area This kind of mesoporous nitrides has a high specific surface area, and is different from the general bulk nitrides It has outstanding chemical properties, especially as a catalyst In recent years, his research team has made systematic research on the nano binary nitrides (TMN) (TM = Cr, Ti, V, Nb, Ta, W and Mo) and ternary nitrides (ticrn2, tinbn2, co3znn and ni3znn), and published many SCI academic articles In recent research, Yang Minghui led his team to prepare a kind of zirconium nitride (ZrN) nano particle catalyst by urea glass method, which can replace or even exceed Pt based catalyst as orr catalyst in alkaline environment It was found that the synthesized ZrN nanoparticles (NPS) had high orr performance and had the same activity as the widely used Pt / C commercial catalyst In 0.1M KOH solution, ZrN NPs and commercial Pt / C have the same half wave potential After 1000 cycles, ZrN shows higher stability than commercial Pt / C catalyst In addition, ZrN showed higher power density and stability than Pt / C catalyst Replacing Pt with ZrN can reduce the cost and promote the use of electrochemical energy equipment, and ZrN has potential applications in other catalytic systems Relevant research results are published in nature materials (DOI: 10.1038 / s41563-019-0535-9), which is expected to play an important role in the development of clean energy in the future.