Free-standing nitrogen-doped carbon nanofiber films as highly efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction

Free-standing nitrogen-doped carbon nanofiber (NCNF) films based on polyacrylonitrile (PAN) were prepared simply by the combination of electrospinning and thermal treatment. We reused the nitrogen-rich gas generated as the byproduct of PAN at elevated temperature, mainly NH3, for surface etching and nitrogen doping. The as-obtained NCNFs exhibited a rougher surface and smaller diameter than pristine carbon nanofibers. Despite the decreased total N content, a significant increase in the content of pyrrolic-N was observed for the NCNFs. In application to electrochemistry, the free-standing NCNF films showed comparable catalytic activity with a close four-electron pathway to a commercial Pt/C catalyst in alkaline medium toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which can be attributed to the nitrogen doping and high hydrophilicity. More importantly, the ORR current density on the NCNFs only dropped 6.6% after 10,000 s of continuous operation, suggesting an enhanced long-time durability. In addition, the NCNFs also showed better electrocatalytic selectivity than Pt/C. Our work reveals a facile but efficient approach for the synthesis of free-standing NCNF films as a promising alternative to Pt-based electrocatalysts in fuel cells.