The massive use of fossil energy has brought serious environmental pollution and energy crisis. It is foreseeable that in the near future, the energy use of human society will be converted from limited carbon-based fossil energy to endless renewable energy. Fuel cells and metal-air batteries play an important role in this type of energy conversion. At present, expensive Pt catalysts have always been used in fuel cells; it is reported that Pt catalysts account for about 20% of the entire fuel cell cost, which is one of the important reasons that such high-efficiency energy devices have not been used on a large scale. Therefore, the development of low-cost electrocatalytic materials with high activity and stability remains a great challenge.
Recently, researcher Wang Jiacheng of Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and researcher Yang Minghui (co-corresponding author) of Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Professor J. Paul Attfield (co-corresponding author) of University of Edinburgh and Tiju Thomas The professor found that the zirconium-based materials showed great potential to replace precious metal Pt catalysts. Pt metal reserves are very scarce, and the price is very expensive, up to about 300 yuan per gram; compared with Zr metal reserves, the price is only 1/700 of Pt.
The research results were recently published in the internationally renowned journal Nature Materials (doi: 10.1038 / s41563-019-0535-9, IF = 38.9). The title of the paper was "Zirconium Nitride Catalysts SurpassPlatinum for Oxygen Reduction" Researcher Wang Jiacheng, as the co-first author of the paper, participated in important work such as experimental design, data analysis, and mechanism mining. Associate researcher Ma Ruguang of Shanghai Silicate Institute participated in the work.
Thesis link: www.nature.com/articles/s41563-019-0535-9
In this study, the researchers used a gentle urea-glass method to prepare high-activity ZrN nanoparticles at lower temperatures. Studies have shown that they have activity comparable to commercial Pt catalysts. In addition, ZrN also shows better long-term stability than Pt. In the actual zinc-air battery test, the performance degradation of the commercial Pt catalyst after a period of use is obvious; while the performance degradation of the ZrN catalyst is much slower.
In the future, the research team will further cooperate with the industry to strive to convert the laboratory research results into actual innovative products, which will help the large-scale use of clean energy and is expected to contribute to solving the energy crisis and environmental pollution problems .