Potassium Cobalt Pyrophosphate as a Nonprecious Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Zinc-Air Batteries.

Economic and sustainable (ecological) energy storage forms a major pillar of the global energy sector. Bifunctional electrocatalysts, based on oxygen electrolysis, play a key role in the development of rechargeable metal-air batteries. Pursuing precious metal-free economic catalysts, here, we report KCoPO pyrophosphate as a robust cathode for secondary zinc-air batteries with efficient oxygen evolution and oxygen reduction (OER||ORR) activity. Prepared by autocombustion, nanoscale KCoPO exhibited excellent oxygen reduction and evolution reactions among all phosphate-based electrocatalysts. In particular, the OER activity surpassed that of commercial RuO with low overpotential (0.27 V). First-principles calculations revealed that the bifunctional activity is rooted in the Co active site with the CoO local coordination in the most stable (110) surface. This nanostructured (tetragonal) pyrophosphate can be harnessed as an economic bifunctional catalyst for zinc-air batteries.