FeNi coordination polymer based highly efficient and durable bifunction oxygen electrocatalyst for rechargeable zinc-air battery

In the current field of electrochemistry, it is still a great challenge to develop bifunction oxygen electrocatalysts with low cost, high activity and long-lasting durability for rechargeable metal-air batteries. In this research, an excellent electrocatalyst for both oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which was composed of nanostructured FeNi alloy nanoparticles inlaid on N-doped GOs-tangled porous carbon matrix (FeNi/N-GPCM), was prepared by pyrolyzing the Ni2+ ion doped bimetallic Fe-Ni coordination polymer (CP) with graphene oxide (GO) as template in the presence of melamine. Owing to the multilayer porous carbon structure and strong synergistic coupling between N-doped carbon species and FeNi alloy, the prepared electrocatalyst exhibited better catalytic performance (half-wave potential of 0.883 V and overpotential of 310 mV) than commercial Pt/C and RuO2. In addition, the Zinc-air battery prepared by the as-obtained bifunction-catalyst has a small charge–discharge voltage gap of 0.85 V, a high energy efficiency of 58.45 %, and an excellent cycling performance (400 h) at 10 mA cm−2 under ambient conditions. This work provided a great promising non-noble metal based multifunctional electrocatalyst for the storage and conversion of renewable energy and was very conductive for the design and synthesis of new CP or metal organic framework (MOF)-based electrocatalysts in the future.