Ternary doped porous carbon nanofibers with excellent ORR and OER performance for zinc–air batteries

The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) play an important role in the air electrode reactions of rechargeable Zn–air batteries. However, noble metal-based catalysts for the ORR and OER always suffer from high cost and poor stability. Carbon-based materials with many advantages such as low cost, good conductivity, a large specific surface area and considerable durability are considered as promising alternatives to noble metal-based catalysts. In particular, the doping of heteroatoms into carbon has been proven to be an effective method to improve catalytic performance. Herein, we synthesized N, F, P ternary doped macro-porous carbon fibers (NFPC) as a bifunctional catalyst for primary and rechargeable Zn–air batteries for the first time via an electrospinning method with subsequent thermal annealing. The uniform distribution of heteroatoms in the macroporous carbon fibers induced a greatly improved catalytic efficiency towards the ORR and OER, showing exceptional properties in Zn–air systems.