Plasma-Assisted Synthesis of Defect-Rich O and N Codoped Carbon Nanofibers Loaded with Manganese Oxides as an Efficient Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalyst for Aluminum-Air Batteries

Ruiqi Cheng; Fei Wang; Min Jiang; Kaiqi Li; Tianshuo Zhao; Pengyu Meng; Jian Yang; Chaopeng Fu

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c09067

Plasma-Assisted Synthesis of Defect-Rich O and N Codoped Carbon Nanofibers Loaded with Manganese Oxides as an Efficient Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalyst for Aluminum-Air Batteries

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Aug 11;13(31):37123-37132. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c09067. Epub 2021 Jul 31.

Authors

Ruiqi Cheng¹, Fei Wang¹, Min Jiang¹, Kaiqi Li¹, Tianshuo Zhao¹, Pengyu Meng¹, Jian Yang¹, Chaopeng Fu¹

Affiliation

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.

PMID: 34333971
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c09067

Abstract

The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) with sluggish kinetics on the cathode of aluminum-air (Al-air) batteries greatly limits their further development. Here, a new strategy is proposed to synthesize oxygen and nitrogen codoped carbon nanofibers loaded with manganese oxides (MnO/Mn₂O₃/ONCNF-n) as an efficient electrocatalyst for ORR by using oxygen plasma surface etching. The MnO/Mn₂O₃/ONCNF-3 exhibit superior ORR performance in an alkaline electrolyte, which is attributed to various active sites including N and O heteroatoms, vacancies, and manganese oxides. Additionally, the fabricated homemade Al-air battery (AAB) with MnO/Mn₂O₃/ONCNF-3 exhibits a maximum power density of 129.7 mW cm^-2, demonstrating comparable performance to AABs based on the commercial Pt/C catalyst. This work provides a new approach of using O₂ plasma for enhancing the ORR catalytic activities of carbon materials.

Keywords: Al−air battery; defect; manganese oxides; oxygen reduction reaction; plasma etching.