Regulating the p-orbital valence electrons of atomically dispersed main-group metals to improve the inherent electrocatalytic activity has attracted extensive concerns. Herein, we designed and synthesized an atomically dispersed Sb−SeNC catalyst containing SbN 2 C 2 and SeC 2 structures, which have been identified by X-ray absorption spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Sb−SeNC exhibits a high activity for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), and a Sb− SeNC-based flexible solid-state zinc−air battery (ZAB) can work efficiently at −40 °C, with a peak power density of 54.1 mW cm −2 and a rate discharge operation of about 44 h. DFT calculations further confirm the long-range regulation mechanism of the SeC 2 moiety for the ORR of SbN 2 C 2 and obtain the volcano relationship of U onset vs the Se−N distance. When the Se−N distance is 7.4 Å, the adsorption ability of active site Sb can be regulated to an optimal state related to the RDS: *O → *OH, while the smaller Se−N distance in short-range would lead to the excessive attenuation of adsorption ability of active site and decrease of ORR activity, which therefore yields the long-range regulation effect of Se doping on the ORR activity of SbN 2 C 2 . This long-range regulation strategy may provide a promising approach to boost the catalytic activity of main-group metal catalysts to achieve its application in ultralow-temperature solid-state ZABs.

Developing highly efficient catalysts for hydrogen oxidation / evolution reactions (HOR / HER) is urgently needed for accelerating the development of fuel cells and hydrogen generation technique by water electrolysis....

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Discovering highly efficient and stable non-precious metal catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is crucial for energy conversion in water splitting. However, preparing high-performance OER catalysts and elucidating the structural changes in the process are still challenging. Herein, we synthesize the NiTe/Ni2P heterostructure and demonstrate the strain engineering of NiTe/Ni2P via the lattice incompatibility between the phosphide and the telluride. The strain engineering of the NiTe/Ni2P heterostructure not only significantly boosts the OER activity but also effectively stabilizes the intrinsic structure of the catalyst after the OER process by using the in situ-produced metal salt as a protection layer. After the OER stability test, no oxyhydroxide phase is observed, and in situ Raman spectroscopy reveals that a voltage-dependent phase transition appears during the OER, which is different from most previously reported Ni-based catalysts, for which the generation of irreversible NiOOH occurs after the OER. Density functional theory calculations further reveal that the tensile strain of Ni2P will inhibit the presence of irreversible phase transitions of Ni2P into NiOOH due to the weak adsorption ability of the oxygen species caused by strain engineering. In short, this work opens a new gate for using strain nanotechnology to design high-performance OER catalysts.