Bio-assisted synthesis of cobalt-based heterostructures in carbon nanobelts for enhanced oxygen catalysis in Zn-air battery.

The delicate design and fabrication of transition metal-based heterostructures with abundant active sites are a crucial issue for achieving superior electrocatalytic properties. In this work, we introduce a novel bio-assisted strategy for assembling cobalt-based heterostructures on nitrogen and phosphorus codoped carbon nanobelts, which serve as highly efficient bifunctional oxygen catalysts. The fungus of Rhizopus is utilized to encapsulate the Co-CoTe within the in-situ formed nitrogen and phosphorus codoped carbon nanotubes (NPCNT), resulting in hairy nanobelts with a porous structure and excellent flexibility.

Co/CoTe heterostructure internal hairy fibers as high-efficiency oxygen electrocatalyst for Zn-air batteries.

The design of highly efficient catalysts to enhance the kinetics of oxygen reduction (OER) and oxygen evolution (ORR) reactions is the key issue for the development of high-performance Zn-air battery. In this work, we report the design of Co-CoTe heterostructured fibers as the bifunctional oxygen catalyst for Zn-air battery. Firstly, the theoretical analysis was carried out on Co-CoTe heterostructure.