posted on 2021-05-26, 14:46authored byYindong Gu, Yuxiang Min, Li Li, Yuebin Lian, Hao Sun, Dan Wang, Mark H. Rummeli, Jun Guo, Jun Zhong, Lai Xu, Yang Peng, Zhao Deng
Among
the various polymorphs of manganese oxides, β-MnO2 has been long regarded as an inert electrocatalyst for oxygen
conversion due to its high thermodynamic stability and consummate
lattice structure. Herein, for the first time, we report the phenomenon
of crystal splintering induced by interstitial atomic doping for drastically
enhancing the activities of both oxygen evolution (OER) and oxygen
reduction (ORR) reactions for β-MnO2. Ru-doped β-MnO2 exhibits an ultralow OER and ORR voltage gap of only 0.63
V, which is the best ever observed for β-MnO2 and
surpasses many state-of-the-art bifunctional oxygen catalysts reported
to date. Through advanced microscopic and spectroscopic characterizations,
in conjunction with theoretical understandings, the drastically improved
OER activity is attributed to the highly under-coordinated Ru–O
sites exposed on the surface upon crystal splintering, while the enhanced
ORR property originates from the strained M–O configuration
with enriched Mn3+ content and oxygen vacancies.