Ni3Fe‐N Doped Carbon Sheets as a Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Air Cathodes

By G. Fu, Zhiming Cui, Yifan Chen, Yutao Li, Yawen Tang, John B. Goodenough. 2016

368 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A promising bifunctional electrocatalyst is reported for air cathodes consisting of Ni3Fe nanoparticles embedded in porous nitrogen‐doped carbon sheets (Ni3Fe/N‐C sheets) by a facile and effective pyrolysis‐based route with sodium chloride (NaCl) crystals as a template. The Ni3Fe/N‐C sheets show excellent catalytic activity, selectivity, and durability toward both the oxygen‐reduction and oxygen‐evolution reactions (ORR and OER). They are shown to provide a superior, low‐cost cathode for a rechargeable Zn‐air battery. At a discharge–charge current density of 10 mA cm−2, the Ni3Fe/N‐C sheets enable a Zn–air battery to cycle steadily up to 420 h with only a small increase in the round‐trip overpotential, outperforming the more costly Pt/C + IrO2 mixture catalyst (160 h). With the simplicity and scalability of the synthetic approach and its remarkable bifunctional electrocatalytic performance, the Ni3Fe/N‐C sheets offer a promising rechargeable air cathode operating at room temperature in an alkaline electrolyte.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/634e35daf0c4bdbb7c397ac487503efa168f8bc4