Controllable Construction of Core-Shell Polymer@Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks Fiber Derived Heteroatom-Doped Carbon Nanofiber Network for Efficient Oxygen Electrocatalysis

Yingxuan Zhao; Qingxue Lai; Junjie Zhu; Jia Zhong; Zeming Tang; Yan Luo; Yanyu Liang

doi:10.1002/smll.201704207

Controllable Construction of Core-Shell Polymer@Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks Fiber Derived Heteroatom-Doped Carbon Nanofiber Network for Efficient Oxygen Electrocatalysis

Small. 2018 May;14(19):e1704207. doi: 10.1002/smll.201704207. Epub 2018 Mar 26.

Authors

Yingxuan Zhao¹, Qingxue Lai¹, Junjie Zhu¹, Jia Zhong¹, Zeming Tang¹, Yan Luo¹, Yanyu Liang¹

Affiliation

¹ Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Materials and Technology for Energy Conversion, College of Materials Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, P. R. China.

PMID: 29577622
DOI: 10.1002/smll.201704207

Abstract

Designing rational nanostructures of metal-organic frameworks based carbon materials to promote the bifunctional catalytic activity of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is highly desired but still remains a great challenge. Herein, an in situ growth method to achieve 1D structure-controllable zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs)/polyacrylonitrile (PAN) core/shell fiber (PAN@ZIFs) is developed. Subsequent pyrolysis of this precursor can obtain a heteroatom-doped carbon nanofiber network as an efficient bifunctional oxygen electrocatalyst. The electrocatalytic performance of derived carbon nanofiber is dominated by the structures of PAN@ZIFs fiber, which is facilely regulated by efficiently controlling the nucleation and growth process of ZIFs on the surface of polymer fiber as well as optimizing the components of ZIFs. Benefiting from the core-shell structures with appropriate dopants and porosity, as-prepared catalysts show brilliant bifunctional ORR/OER catalytic activity and durability. Finally, the rechargeable Zn-air battery assembled from the optimized catalyst (CNF@Zn/CoNC) displays a peak power density of 140.1 mW cm^-2 , energy density of 878.9 Wh kg_Zn^-1 , and excellent cyclic stability over 150 h, giving a promising performance in realistic application.

Keywords: Zn-air batteries; bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysis; electrospinning; heteroatom-doped carbon nanofibers; zeolitic imidazolate frameworks.