Self-Powered and Highly Efficient Production of H2O2 through a Zn-Air Battery with Oxygenated Carbon Electrocatalyst.

Industrially producing H2O2 consumes lots of energy and generates byproducts. For the first time, we demonstrate the non-energy-consuming, self-powered production of H2O2 based on a Zn-air battery with oxygenated carbon electrocatalyst. The battery with power density of 360 W mgeo-2 at a operating voltage of 0.8 V exhibited high H2O2 production rate of 5.93 mol mgeo-2 h-1. By tuning the ratio of the oxygen-containg groups, the origin of the high activity was investigated. Combining the DFT calculations, we found that C-O-C and -CHO contribute more to the H2O2 production compared to other functional groups.