Mesoporous tungsten oxynitride as electrocatalyst for promoting redox reactions of vanadium redox couple and performance of vanadium redox flow battery

Abstract

For enhancing the performance of vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB), a sluggish reaction rate issue of V2+/V3+ redox couple evaluated as the rate determining reaction should be addressed. For doing that, mesoporous tungsten oxide (m-WO3) and oxyniride (m-WON) structures are proposed as the novel catalysts, while m-WON is gained by NH3 heat treatment of m-WO3. Their specific surface area, crystal structure, surface morphology and component analysis are measured using BET, XRD, TEM and XPS, while their catalytic activity for V2+/V3+ redox reaction is electrochemically examined. As a result, the m-WON shows higher peak current, smaller peak potential difference, higher electron transfer rate constant and lower charge transfer resistance than other catalysts, like the m-WO3, WO3 nanoparticle and mesoporous carbon, proving that it is superior catalyst. Regarding the charge-discharge curve tests, the VRFB single cell employing the m-WON demonstrates high voltage and energy efficiencies, high specific capacity and low capacity loss rate. The excellent results of m-WON are due to the reasons like (i) reduced energy band gap, (ii) reaction familiar surface functional groups and (ii) greater electronegativity.