Metal‐Free Bifunctional Ordered Mesoporous Carbon for Reversible Zn‐CO<sub>2</sub> Batteries
Sanshuang Gao, Yifan Liu, Zhongyuan Xie, Yuan Qiu, Longchao Zhuo, Yongji Qin, Junqiang Ren, Shusheng Zhang, Guangzhi Hu, Jun Luo, Xijun Liu
Abstract
Abstract The fabrication of Zn‐CO 2 batteries is a promising technique for CO 2 fixation and energy storage. Herein, nitrogen‐doped ordered mesoporous carbon (NOMC) is adopted as a bifunctional metal‐free electrocatalyst for CO 2 reduction and oxygen evolution reaction in the near‐neutral electrolyte. The ordered mesoporous structures and abundant N‐dopings of NOMC facilitate the accessibility and utilization of the active sites, which endow NOMC with excellent electrocatalysis performance and outstanding stability. Especially, a nearly 100% CO Faradaic efficiency is achieved at an ultralow overpotential of 360 mV for CO 2 reduction. When constructed as an aqueous rechargeable Zn‐CO 2 battery using NOMC as the cathode, it yields a high peak power density of 0.71 mW cm −2 , a good cyclability of 300 cycles, and excellent energy efficiency of 52.8% at 1.0 mA cm −2 .