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Turning Cotton to Self-Supported Electrocatalytic Carbon Electrode for Highly Efficient Oxygen Reduction

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Abstract

Exploring self-supported electrodes with effective oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity and durability is of great significance for the future development of metal-air batteries and fuel cells. However, there remain serious challenges in identifying suitable materials and developing sustainable fabrication processes to achieve highly efficient, durable and low-cost self-supported air cathodes. In this work, we report a facile and environmentally friendly method to fabricate electrocatalytic carbon electrodes from commercial cotton fabrics with excellent ORR activity. The iron and nitrogen co-doped carbon fabrics possess outstanding ORR catalytic performance comparable with that of Pt/C, with an onset potential of 0.92 V (vs. RHE) and an electron transfer number close to 4. The experimental results have shown that our carbonisation process can give a high specific surface area (1769 m2/g) with a hierarchical porous structure. Doping leads to the formation of Fe-Nχ species with excellent catalytic activity and durability. Finally, both fundamental understanding of liquid Zn-air battery with well-ground catalysts powders from carbon fabric and practical application of self-supported carbon fabric electrode in solid-state Zn-air battery exhibit promising performance. Our results strongly suggest that natural cellulose fabrics can be a promising material for fabricating highly active, durable and affordable air cathodes for many renewable energy devices such as metal-air batteries and fuel cells.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the support from Australian Research Council (ARC) through ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES). Deakin University’s Advanced Characterization Facility is acknowledged for use of the EM instrument and assistance from Dr. Pavel Cizek. This work was performed in part at the Deakin node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility, a company established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy to provide nano and micro-fabrication facilities for Australia’s researchers. The authors also thank the assistance from Mr. Zhiyu Wang and Dr. Si Qin during the stability test of the liquid cells.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, 3216, Australia

    Shan Jiang, Hao Shao, Mengying Luo, Jingliang Li, Xungai Wang & Jian Fang

  2. State Key Laboratory of New Textile Materials and Advanced Processing Technologies, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, 430200, People’s Republic of China

    Genyang Cao, Dan Sheng & Weilin Xu

  3. Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    Gordon G. Wallace

  4. ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), Wollongong, Australia

    Xungai Wang

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  1. Shan Jiang
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  2. Genyang Cao
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Jiang, S., Cao, G., Shao, H. et al. Turning Cotton to Self-Supported Electrocatalytic Carbon Electrode for Highly Efficient Oxygen Reduction. Electrocatalysis 11, 317–328 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12678-020-00582-2

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