Inhibiting Surface Diffusion to Synthesize 3D Bicontinuous Nanoporous N-Doped Carbon for Boosting Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Flexible All-Solid-State Al-Air Batteries

Catalyzing oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and accelerating oxygen diffusion are two key challenges for the requirements of the cathode catalysts in the metal-air batteries. A promising strategy for improving both ORR performance and mass diffusion simultaneously is to build carbon-based catalysts with ORR-active chemical dopants and 3D interconnected porosity. Herein, a 3D nanoporous N-doped carbon with bicontinuous porosity and interconnected open-pore channels is reported, which is prepared by a polyaniline-assisted template method. The polyaniline can efficiently inhibit the surface diffusion-caused template coarsening, achieving a small pore size of 35 nm. The small porous morphology gives rise to a high N-dopant concentration up to 7.20 at.%, which in turn exhibits a commercial Pt/C-comparable ORR performance together with satisfied durability in alkaline media. Using these nanoporous carbon catalysts as air electrodes, an all-solid-state flexible Al-air battery is assembled with the measured maximum power density reaching 130.5 mW cm⁻², as compared to 106.2 mW cm⁻² when the commercial Pt/C standard is used. This study provides an efficient method to synthesize 3D N-doped carbon with bicontinuous nano-sized pore channels for wide-ranging applications in portable and flexible devices.