title: Iron Carbide Nanoparticles Encapsulated in Mesoporous Fe-N-Doped Graphene-Like Carbon Hybrids as Efficient Bifunctional Oxygen Electrocatalysts.
abstract: It is highly crucial and challenging to develop bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reactions (ORRs) and oxygen evolution reactions (OERs) in rechargeable metal-air batteries and unitized regenerative fuel cells (URFCs). Herein, a facile and cost-effective strategy is developed to prepare mesoporous Fe-N-doped graphene-like carbon architectures with uniform Fe3C nanoparticles encapsulated in graphitic layers (Fe3C@NG) via a one-step solid-state thermal reaction. The optimized Fe3C@NG800-0.2 catalyst shows comparable ORR activity with the state-of-the-art Pt/C catalyst and OER activity with the benchmarking RuO2 catalyst. The oxygen electrode activity parameter ΔE (the criteria for judging the overall catalytic activity of bifunctional electrocatalysts) value for Fe3C@NG800-0.2 is 0.780 V, which surpasses those of Pt/C and RuO2 catalysts as well as those of most nonprecious metal catalysts. Significantly, excellent long-term catalytic durability holds great promise in fields of rechargeable metal-air batteries and URFCs.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology , 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Hongliang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology , 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Yifan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology , 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Yihua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology , 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Yanyan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology , 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Yunhe
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology , 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoling
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology , 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Chunzhong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li
keywords: graphitic layers; iron carbide; oxygen electrocatalysts; oxygen evolution reaction; oxygen reduction reaction