Metal‐organic framework‐derived Cu@Co4N nanoparticles anchored on N-doped carbon nanotubes for efficient and stable ORR activity

Developing highly efficient, durable, and low-cost electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (orr) is very important for energy conversion technologies. electrocatalysts with porous structures, numerous active sites, and earth-abundant are exceedingly favorable for orr reaction. in this work, the 3d nano hollow-shell cu@co4n anchored on n-doped carbon nanotubes (cu@co-n-c) was synthesized using pyrolyzed cu@zncozif. the synthesized cu@co-n-c with bimetallic active sites, high specific surface area, high porosity structure, and nitrogen doping level demonstrated superior orr activity. the physical characteristics of the cathode electrocatalysts were assessed through x-ray powder diffraction (xrd), scanning electron microscopy (fesem), transmission electron microscopy (tem), brunauer-emmett-teller (bet), raman, and energy dispersive x-ray analysis (edx) for elemental mapping. the electrocatalyst illustrated a higher half-wave potential of 0.88 v vs. rhe than that of the pt/c electrocatalyst in an alkaline electrolyte. moreover, it also has excellent orr stability, making it one of the best pt-free electrocatalysts. the current density of the cu@co-n-c is approximately -5.46 ma cm-2, which is higher than that of co-n-c (-4.20 ma cm-2) and ncnts (-1.9 ma cm-2). moreover, higher stability was obtained for cu@co-n-c in comparison with pt/c. so, this material is an excellent choice as a cathodic catalyst for application in metal-air fuel cells.