Journal
NANOSCALE
Volume 10, Issue 42, Pages 19937-19944Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c8nr05812a
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Funding
- Singapore Maritime Institute Maritime Sustainability (MSA) RD Programme [SMI-2015-MA-14]
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The rational design of highly-active and stable reversible oxygen electrocatalysts for both the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) plays a key role in rechargeable metal-air batteries, yet remains a great challenge. Herein, a novel dual-crosslinked hydrogel strategy is proposed to synthesize a new type of carbon aerogel that anchors the iron-cobalt (FeCo) particles as a bifunctional oxygen catalyst. The proposed hydrogel composed of an organic/inorganic network can be easily obtained by initiating sol-gel polymerization of cyanometalates, chitosan and graphene oxide. After pyrolysis, FeCo nanocrystals can be in situ uniformly immobilized within the N-doped dual-network carbon aerogels (FeCo/N-DNC) with a robust 3D porous framework. When used as an electrocatalyst, the newly developed FeCo/N-DNC aerogels exhibit a positive onset potential (0.89 V) and half-wave potential (0.81 V) for the ORR and a low overpotential (0.39 V) at 10 mA cm(-2) for the OER, while presenting excellent electrochemical stability after being tested for 10000 s. More importantly, the FeCo/N-DNC driven Zn-air battery reveals a smaller charge/discharge voltage gap, higher power/energy density and better cycling stability than the costlier Pt/C + RuO2 mixture catalyst. Our findings provide a facile and feasible synthetic strategy for obtaining highly active and stable electrocatalysts.
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