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.
Keywords: graphitic layers; iron carbide; oxygen electrocatalysts; oxygen evolution reaction; oxygen reduction reaction.