Turning main-group element magnesium into a highly active electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

It is known that the main-group metals and their related materials show poor catalytic activity due to a broadened single resonance derived from the interaction of valence orbitals of adsorbates with the broad sp-band of main-group metals. However, Mg cofactors existing in enzymes are extremely active in biochemical reactions. Our density function theory calculations reveal that the catalytic activity of the main-group metals (Mg, Al and Ca) in oxygen reduction reaction is severely hampered by the tight-bonding of active centers with hydroxyl group intermediate, while the Mg atom coordinated to two nitrogen atoms has the near-optimal adsorption strength with intermediate oxygen species by the rise of p-band center position compared to other coordination environments. We experimentally demonstrate that the atomically dispersed Mg cofactors incorporated within graphene framework exhibits a strikingly high half-wave potential of 910 mV in alkaline media, turning a s/p-band metal into a highly active electrocatalyst.