Cascade anchoring strategy for general mass production of high-loading single-atomic metal-nitrogen catalysts

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09290-y
• Publication Date: 2019-03-20T11:04:20Z
• Authors: Lu Zhao; Yun Zhang; Lin-Bo Huang; Xiao-Zhi Liu; Qing-Hua Zhang; Chao He; Ze-Yuan Wu; Lin-Juan Zhang; Jinpeng Wu; Wanli Yang; Lin Gu; Jin-Song Hu; Li-Jun Wan
• Keywords: 570; Engineering; Science; Chemical Sciences; Q; Materials Engineering; 540; 01 natural sciences; Article; 0104 chemical sciences

AbstractAlthough single-atomically dispersed metal-Nx on carbon support (M-NC) has great potential in heterogeneous catalysis, the scalable synthesis of such single-atom catalysts (SACs) with high-loading metal-Nx is greatly challenging since the loading and single-atomic dispersion have to be balanced at high temperature for forming metal-Nx. Herein, we develop a general cascade anchoring strategy for the mass production of a series of M-NC SACs with a metal loading up to 12.1 wt%. Systematic investigation reveals that the chelation of metal ions, physical isolation of chelate complex upon high loading, and the binding with N-species at elevated temperature are essential to achieving high-loading M-NC SACs. As a demonstration, high-loading Fe-NC SAC shows superior electrocatalytic performance for O2 reduction and Ni-NC SAC exhibits high electrocatalytic activity for CO2 reduction. The strategy paves a universal way to produce stable M-NC SAC with high-density metal-Nx sites for diverse high-performance applications.