Iron Carbide Nanoparticles Encapsulated in Mesoporous Fe–N-Doped Graphene-Like Carbon Hybrids as Efficient Bifunctional Oxygen Electrocatalysts

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.