On April 1st, Professor Zhao Guohua’s team from the School of Chemical Science and Engineering at Tongji University, published groundbreaking findings in the prestigious international chemical journal of Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The electrocatalytic synthesis of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) through the two-electron oxygen reduction pathway represents a green production process that has gained increasing importance. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of efficacious catalysts to attain high activity under industrial current density.
The team innovatively utilize the self-optimized reconstruction behavior of MOFs in the electrocatalytic process, successfully introducing cation vacancies into the reconstructed active species for efficient H2O2 electrosynthesis. Impressively, the prepared electrocatalyst (ZIF-ZC91@Co(OH)2-VCo) exhibits significant activity for 2e− ORR with H2O2 selectivity of over 97%, and ultrahigh H2O2 productivity of 24.53 mol gcatalyst-1h-1. Remarkably, in the solid-electrolyte cell configuration, the catalyst demonstrates exceptional long-term durability for over 220 h, and can output a concentration of ~8.03 wt% in continuous H2O2 production in the pilot experiment. This strategy is expected to provide reference and inspiration for the distributed and sustainable electrosynthesis of hydrogen peroxide.
Professor Zhao Guohua is the corresponding author, and Ph.D. candidate Miao Chao is the first author of the paper. This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Additionally, this work acknowledges the help from Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility.
Paper Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202501930
