Construction of Cu Clusters to Enable Fe-N ₄ Sites with Highly Oxygen Reduction Performance in Zinc-Air Batteries

Zinc–air batteries (ZABs) have received focused research due to their advantages such as high energy utilization and low pollution. However, the slow oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the high price of Pt/C catalysts severely limit the efficiency of ZABs. Therefore, the development of efficient, stable and inexpensive catalysts has become the key to the development of ZABs. In this study, we introduce Cu nanoclusters (NCs) to form coupled catalysts with FeNC catalyst, which can modulate and stabilize the geometry and electronic structure of the Fe active center during the reaction process. The Cu NCs also can promote the electron transfer of Fe atoms, thus significantly improving the electrocatalytic performance of the catalyst. The half-wave potential of the obtained Cu[Formula: see text]@FeNC catalysts reaches 0.91[Formula: see text]V and still possesses 82% activity after 60 000[Formula: see text]s durability test, which is a significant improvement over commercial Pt/C under the same conditions. When assembled into ZABs, its power density reaches 259[Formula: see text]mW cm[Formula: see text], which is significantly improved compared with the 199[Formula: see text]mW cm[Formula: see text] of the Pt/C catalyst.