Shows enhanced performance of vacancy-rich catalysts in Zn-air batteries, suggesting a breakthrough in energy storage technology.
Zn‐air batteries (ZABs) hold great promise when the air cathode offers abundant active sites, fast kinetics, and high reversibility for oxygen reduction/evolution reactions (ORR/OER). Here, we report vacancy‐rich Co 9 S 6 . 29 precatalysts formed via ultrafine MnS‐induced lattice distortion in mesoporous S‐doped pyridinic/graphitic N‐rich hollow carbon nanotubes (CM@SNHCTs), synthesized through in situ sulfidation and Zn/melamine evaporation from polydopamine‐coated Mn–Co/Zn metal–organic frameworks. MnS‐induced Co 9 S 6 . 29 formation enables ∼fourfold higher capacitance than IrO 2 , while the SNHCT generates Zn/melamine‐evaporated mesoporous S‐doped pyridinic N‐rich channels for rapid ion transport and graphitic N‐rich networks for facile electron conduction. CM@SNHCT precatalysts reconstruct into CoOOH/CoO active phases, enabling O‐vacancy formation via OH − desorption during ORR and bidentate O 2 adsorption during OER, as well as O‐vacancy healing governed by OH − adsorption and deprotonation, as confirmed by operando Raman spectroscopy and 1 8 O‐labeled differential electrochemical mass spectrometry. Density functional theory calculations reveal low Gibbs free‐energy barriers for oxygen intermediates after reconstruction, while strong CM‐SNHCT binding ensure structural stability. Consequently, CM@SNHCT outperforms Pt/C for ORR and IrO 2 for OER with electrochemical stability over 5000 cycles. Moreover, the ZAB assembled with CM@SNHCT cathode and high‐capacity Zn anode achieves near‐theoretical energy density (993.8 Wh·kg − 1 ) and stable voltages after 250 charge–discharge cycles, establishing a state‐of‐the‐art ZAB platform.
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Khumujam et al. (2026) studied this question.
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