Manipulating the coordination dice: Alkali metals directed synthesis of Co-N-C catalysts with CoN₄ sites.

ABSTRACT: Nitrogen-coordinated metal sites (MN_x) in metal- and nitrogen-codoped carbon (M-N-C) catalysts offer promising electrocatalytic activity, but selective synthetic design of MN_x sites with specific coordination environments remains challenging. Here, we manipulate the formation statistics of MN_x sites by using sacrifice alkali metals (AM = Li, Na, and K) to form metal vacancy-N_x carbon (AM-MVN_x-C) templates, which are used to direct the solution-phase formation of CoN₄ sites in Co-N-C catalysts. We build a probability weight function based on the embedding energy of M in MN_x sites as the descriptor for MN_x formation statistics, and we predict that the alkal

SUBMITTER: Huang M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11864188 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature