What is it about?
Development of effcient bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts is urgently needed for high-performance rechargeable Zn–air batteries. Herein, a facile strategy is reported to prepare 3D holey N-doped graphene (3D HNG) with the aid of molten salts for boosting the performance of ORR/OER-driven Zn–air batteries.
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Why is it important?
we have developed a facile approach to prepare 3D holey N-doped graphene, simply by fast pyrolysis of alanine in the molten salt of sodium carbonate, and post-graphitization. In oxygen electrocatalysts, super bifunctional catalytic activity toward both ORR and OER was achieved, and the fabricated rechargeable Zn–air batteries show excellent discharge capacity, rechargeability, and round-trip effciency. The matched N catalytic active sites, large specifc surface area, and special hierarchical porous structure are key factors for high performance. DFT computations further confrm that the matched arm-GN and zig-PyN active sites are essential for the bifunctional electrocatalytic activity of N-doped carbon materials.
Perspectives
This work provides a new strategy for optimizing N-doped carbon materials for bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts. The present work may shed new insight into the design and fabrication of highly active metal-free electrocatalysts and promote the practical applications to electrochemical energy storage and conversion technologies.
Huijuan Cui
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nankai University,Tianjin, China
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Molten-Salt-Assisted Synthesis of 3D Holey N-Doped Graphene as Bifunctional Electrocatalysts for Rechargeable Zn-Air Batteries, Small Methods, August 2018, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/smtd.201800144.
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