Efficient Bifunctional Oxygen Electrocatalysts for Rechargeable Zinc–Air Battery: Fe 3 O 4 /N−C Nanoflowers Derived from Aromatic Polyamide

• Published in: ChemCatChem 2022-02, Vol.14 (4)
• Main Authors: Liu, Yanping, Qiao, Bin, Jia, Nan, Shi, Shufeng, Chen, Xinbing, An, Zhongwei, Chen, Pei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1867-3880; 1867-3899
• DOI: 10.1002/cctc.202101523

The development of low‐cost, high‐activity bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts for rechargeable zinc–air batteries is highly desired. Herein, N‐doped carbon nanoflower embedded Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles were prepared using a simple and scalable method. The obtained electrocatalyst exhibits excellent activity and stability toward both oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), as well as a small potential gap of 0.72 V between the half‐wave potential of ORR and the onset potential of OER potential, which is superior to the most previously reported bifunctional ORR/OER catalysts. The corresponding zinc–air battery exhibits good charged/discharge cycle performance as well as excellent discharge property, with a power density of 136.8 mW cm −2 at 200 mA cm −2 outperforming commercial Pt/C (96.5mW cm −2 ). Experiment results and density functional theory demonstrate that the high catalysis activity is mainly caused by the surface oxygen vacancy of Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles. This study sheds new light on the ORR/OER bifunctional electrocatalyst design.