Improved performances toward electrochemical carbon dioxide and oxygen reductions by iron-doped stannum nanoparticles

Jiangtao Zhu; Quan Zhang; Caiyun Wang; Yanhong Feng; Yuanyuan Zhang; Gaocan Qi; Lian Kang; Jun Luo; Xijun Liu

doi:10.1039/d4nr04843a

Improved performances toward electrochemical carbon dioxide and oxygen reductions by iron-doped stannum nanoparticles

Nanoscale. 2025 Jan 20. doi: 10.1039/d4nr04843a. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Jiangtao Zhu¹, Quan Zhang¹, Caiyun Wang², Yanhong Feng¹, Yuanyuan Zhang³, Gaocan Qi⁴, Lian Kang¹, Jun Luo⁵, Xijun Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ MOE Key Laboratory of New Processing Technology for Nonferrous Metals and Materials, School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China.
² Guangxi Vocational & Technical Institute of Industry, Nanning 530001, Guangxi, China. [email protected].
³ Key Laboratory of High-precision Computation and Application of Quantum Field Theory of Hebei Province, Hebei Key Lab of Optic-electronic Information and Materials, The College of Physics Science and Technology, Hebei University, Baoding, 071002, China. [email protected].
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, China. [email protected].
⁵ ShenSi Lab, Shenzhen Institute for Advanced Study, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Longhua District, Shenzhen 518110, China.

PMID: 39829271
DOI: 10.1039/d4nr04843a

Abstract

The CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) show great promise for expanding the use of renewable energy sources and fostering carbon neutrality. Sn-based catalysts show CO₂RR activity; however, they have been rarely reported in the ORR. Herein, we prepared a nitrogen-carbon structure loaded with Fe-doped Sn nanoparticles (Fe-Sn/NC), which has good ORR and CO₂RR activity. The results reveal that the Fe-Sn/NC catalysts deliver a high FE_CO of 99.0% at a low overpotential of -0.47 V in an H-type cell for over 100 h. Notably, a peak power density of 1.36 mW cm^-2 is achieved in the Zn-CO₂ battery with the Fe-Sn/NC cathode at discharge current densities varying from 2.0 to 4.0 mA cm^-2, and the FE_CO remains above 99.0%. Due to efficient oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) performance and Zn-air battery (ZAB) characteristics, the ZAB-driven CO₂RR has strong catalytic stability. This work proves that Fe-Sn/NC enhances the performance of the CO₂RR and ORR, and the study of Zn-based batteries provides a new research direction for energy conversion.