Controlled Asymmetric Charge Distribution of Active Centers in Conjugated Polymers for Oxygen Reduction

Active center reconstruction is essential for high performance oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts. Usually, the ORR activity stems from electronic environment of active sites by charge redistribution. We introduce an asymmetry strategy to adjust distribution centers designing conjugated polymer (CP) catalysts with different degrees asymmetry. synthesized asymmetric backbone CP (asy-PB) modifying B←N coordination bonds and sidechain (asy-PB-A) alkyl chain lengths. Both CPs exhibit superior their symmetric counterparts (sy-P sy-PB). The asy-PB greater shows higher catalytic than asy-PB-A relatively smaller DFT calculations reveal that increased dipole moment non-uniform caused structure endows carbon atom bipyridine efficient activity.