A combination of CoO and Co nanoparticles supported on electrospun carbon nanofibers as highly stable air electrodes

Bifunctional materials able to catalyze both the oxygen reduction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution (OER) reactions in alkaline media are still a challenge for the progress of energy conversion and storage devices such as metal-air batteries or unitized regenerative fuel cells. In this work, carbon nanofibers synthesized by electrospinning are modified with a combination of cobalt oxide and metallic cobalt (CoO-Co/CNF) and studied as a bifunctional air electrode for metal-air batteries. The performance of CoO-Co/CNF for both reactions is compared with state-of-the-art catalysts such as Pt/C and IrO2. The combination of cobalt oxide and metallic cobalt, finely distributed on the surface of graphitic carbon nanofibers, leads to a bifunctional catalyst with a half-wave potential for the ORR slightly better than Pt/C and a reversibility (ΔEOER-ORR) of 809 mV. The stability of CoO-Co/CNF is assessed by means of different stress tests: polarizations at high electrochemical potentials (2 V vs. RHE), rapid charge-discharge cycles at ±80 mA cm−2 and long durability tests by charging for 12 h at 60 mA cm−2 and discharging for 8 h at −80 mA cm−2. CoO-Co/CNF shows a remarkable stability, maintaining, at least, an 82% of its performance for the ORR after the stress tests, even when cycled for more than 100 h.