N‐Doped Graphene Decorated with Fe/Fe₃N/Fe₄N Nanoparticles as a Highly Efficient Cathode Catalyst for Rechargeable Li−O₂ Batteries

Abstract

Abstract The development of low‐cost and highly efficient electrocatalysts for the widespread application in rechargeable Li‐O 2 batteries is still a major research challenge. Herein, porous N‐doped graphene, decorated with Fe/Fe 3 N/Fe 4 N nanoparticles is designed and synthesized via a one‐step pyrolysis of easily available precursors. It is found that the Fe/Fe 3 N/Fe 4 N nanoparticles are uniformly dispersed on the N‐doped graphene substrate, and that both the nanoparticles and the substrate can facilitate the electrochemical reaction. When the rationally designed material is used as cathode in Li‐O 2 batteries, it exhibits excellent electrochemical performance, delivering a high capacity of 7397.8 mAh g −1 and showing impressive cycle stability of over 100 steady cycles. The excellent performance of this material is attributed to the good synergistic effect of uniformly distributed nanoparticles and the porosity of the substrate. These results indicate that the N‐doped graphene decorated with Fe/Fe 3 N/Fe 4 N is an excellent cathode catalyst for Li‐O 2 batteries and would also be a promising new material for other energy storage devices.