posted on 2022-01-11, 11:33authored byMd Ariful Ahsan, Tianwei He, Kamel Eid, Aboubakr M. Abdullah, Mohamed Fathi Sanad, Ali Aldalbahi, Bonifacio Alvarado-Tenorio, Aijun Du, Alain R. Puente Santiago, Juan C. Noveron
The
design of alternative earth-abundant van der Waals (vdW) nanoheterostructures
for bifunctional oxygen evolution/reduction (OER/ORR) electrocatalysis
is of paramount importance to fabricate energy-related devices. Herein,
we report a simple metal–organic framework (MOF)-derived synthetic
strategy to fabricate low-dimensional (LD) nanohybrids formed by zero-dimensional
(0D) ZrO2 nanoparticles (NPs) and heteroatom-doped two-dimensional
(2D) carbon nanostructures. The 2D platforms controlled the electronic
structures of interfacial Zr atoms, thus producing optimized electron
polarization for boron and nitrogen-doped carbon (BCN)/ZrO2 nanohybrids. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and theoretical
studies revealed the key role of the synergistic couple effect of
boron (B) and nitrogen (N) in interfacial electronic polarization.
The BCN/ZrO2 nanohybrid showed excellent bifunctional electrocatalytic
activity, delivering an overpotential (η10) of 301
mV to reach a current density of 10 mA–cm–2 for the OER process and a half-wave potential (E1/2) of 0.85 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE)
for the ORR process, which are comparable to the state-of-the-art
LD nanohybrids. Furthermore, BCN/ZrO2 also showed competitive
performances for water-splitting and zinc–air battery devices.
This work establishes a new route to fabricate highly efficient multifunctional
electrocatalysts by tuning the electronic polarization properties
of 0D–2D electrochemical interfaces.