Bifunctional Oxygen Reaction Catalysis of Quadruple Manganese Perovskites

Bifunctional electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution/reduction reaction (OER/ORR) are desirable for the development of energy conversion technologies. It is discovered that the manganese quadruple perovskites CaMn₇ O₁₂ and LaMn₇ O₁₂ show bifunctional catalysis in the OER/ORR. A possible origin of the high OER activity is the unique surface structure through corner-shared planar MnO₄ and octahedral MnO₆ units to promote direct OO bond formations.