Tuning the Activity of Heterogeneous Cofacial Cobalt Porphyrins for Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysis through Self‐Assembly.

Abstract: We report a suite of coordination‐driven self‐assembled prisms for heterogeneous electrocatalytic oxygen reduction (ORR) differing in the molecular clips linking two porphyrin faces in a cofacial arrangement. ORR activities and selectivities of monomeric CoTPyP along with cofacial prisms Ox‐Co, Oxa‐Co, and Benzo‐Co were probed using cyclic voltammetry and rotating ring‐disk techniques. All species were immobilized as heterogeneous catalysts on glassy carbon electrodes using a Nafion ink method. The selectivities of Ox‐Co, Oxa‐Co, and Benzo‐Co prisms towards H2O as determined by RRDE were 87, 97, and 75 %, respectively. The current density of the Oxa‐Co plateaus at five times that of Pt/C when normalized per Co/Pt. The high synthetic yield (79 %), competitive overpotential (η ≈800 mV) and high selectivity (%H2O ≈97 %) of the Oxa‐Co highlights how self‐assembly can be used to address multi‐electron multi‐proton transformations using polynuclear catalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]