Among the sodium ion batteries (SIBs) system, seawater battery using seawater as the catholyte in an open structured cathode is recently one of the promising subject of research. In order to improve the seawater battery performance, high efficiency OER/ORR electrocatalysts in a powdered form had to be adhered onto the current collectors by using inactive and insulating polymer binders, which can hinder the overall performance of the battery system. Here, we demonstrate, for the first time, a large scale production of nitrogen-doped carbon fibers texture as efficient electrocatalyst for OER/ORR in seawater battery. The nitrogen-doped carbon texture can be simply synthesized by thermal annealing with melamine which is a cheap material that is a great advantage to allow it to be used in industrial production. It was found that the pyridinic nitrogen groups is the main active site for the OER and ORR. The seawater battery using melamine-doped carbon texture at 700 oC as cathode current collector shows better bifunctional electrocatalytic activities toward oxygen evolution and reduction reactions in seawater, higher power density (9.66 mW cm-2) and lower voltage gap (0.84V) than that using bare carbon texture (6.92 mW cm-2 and 1.11V) at a current rate of 0.25 mA cm-2. The good performance keeps unchanged after 20 cycles.

Melamine-doped carbon fiber texture as efficient electrocatalyst for seawater battery

2019 Fall National Meeting

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