Active Salt/Silica‐Templated 2D Mesoporous FeCo‐N_<i>x</i>‐Carbon as Bifunctional Oxygen Electrodes for Zinc–Air Batteries

Abstract

Abstract Two types of templates, an active metal salt and silica nanoparticles, are used concurrently to achieve the facile synthesis of hierarchical meso/microporous FeCo‐N x ‐carbon nanosheets (meso/micro‐FeCo‐N x ‐CN) with highly dispersed metal sites. The resulting meso/micro‐FeCo‐N x ‐CN shows high and reversible oxygen electrocatalytic performances for both ORR and OER, thus having potential for applications in rechargeable Zn–air battery. Our approach creates a new pathway to fabricate 2D meso/microporous structured carbon architectures for bifunctional oxygen electrodes in rechargeable Zn–air battery as well as opens avenues to the scale‐up production of rationally designed heteroatom‐doped catalytic materials for a broad range of applications.