Inhibiting Surface Diffusion to Synthesize 3D Bicontinuous Nanoporous N‐Doped Carbon for Boosting Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Flexible All‐Solid‐State Al‐Air Batteries

Abstract

AbstractCatalyzing oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and accelerating oxygen diffusion are two key challenges for the requirements of the cathode catalysts in the metal‐air batteries. A promising strategy for improving both ORR performance and mass diffusion simultaneously is to build carbon‐based catalysts with ORR‐active chemical dopants and 3D interconnected porosity. Herein, a 3D nanoporous N‐doped carbon with bicontinuous porosity and interconnected open‐pore channels is reported, which is prepared by a polyaniline‐assisted template method. The polyaniline can efficiently inhibit the surface diffusion‐caused template coarsening, achieving a small pore size of 35 nm. The small porous morphology gives rise to a high N‐dopant concentration up to 7.20 at.%, which in turn exhibits a commercial Pt/C‐comparable ORR performance together with satisfied durability in alkaline media. Using these nanoporous carbon catalysts as air electrodes, an all‐solid‐state flexible Al‐air battery is assembled with the measured maximum power density reaching 130.5 mW cm−2, as compared to 106.2 mW cm−2 when the commercial Pt/C standard is used. This study provides an efficient method to synthesize 3D N‐doped carbon with bicontinuous nano‐sized pore channels for wide‐ranging applications in portable and flexible devices.