Alveoli-Inspired Facile Transport Structure of N-Doped Porous Carbon for Electrochemical Energy Applications

Heteroatom-doped porous carbon materials have attracted much attention because of their extensive application in energy conversion and storage devices. Because the performance of fuel cells and the rate capability of supercapacitors depend significantly on multiple factors, such as electrical conductivity and transport rate of ions and reactants, designing these carbon-based materials to optimize performance factors is vital. In order to address these issues, alveoli that possess a hollow cavity where oxygen exchange can occur are synthesized, inspired by N-doped carbon materials with a high surface area and low transport resistance. By incorporating a dopamine coating on zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF), pore size is modified and electrical conducting pathways are constructed, resulting in changes to the reaction kinetics. These highly interconnected electron connection channels and proper pore sizes facilitate the diffusion of reactants and the conduction of electrons, leading to high activity of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which is comparable to Pt, and high rate performance in supercapacitors.