Non-Covalent Interaction of Atomically Dispersed Cu and Zn Pair Sites for Efficient Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Dual–single-atom catalysts with synergistic effect of adjacent atomic metal sites show a great potential for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Herein, a dynamical synthetic strategy is demonstrated for the rational design of dual-atom catalyst ((Zn, Cu) − NC) with non-covalent Cu and Zn sites as nitrogen-doped carbon as support. Owing to the non-covalent interaction of Zn and Cu atomic pair sites, (Zn, Cu) − NC exhibits significant performances for ORR, surpassing the catalysts with individual Zn or Cu site. The theoretical calculations reveal that (Zn, Cu) − NC can highly activate the linear O 2 molecule via the non-covalent interaction between Zn and Cu pairs, providing the more effective overlap between the metal 3d orbitals and O 2p orbital. Therefore, the ORR activity is optimized with the improvement of the adsorption configuration and adsorption energy of O 2 . Further, both liquid and quasi-solid zinc − air batteries with (Zn, Cu) − NC as air cathodes achieve remarkable energy density and stability. This research proposes a facile synthetic strategy to construct single-atom catalysts and presents an insightful understanding of the non-covalent interplay between heteronuclear metal atoms in dual-atom catalysts.