Self-templating construction of N, P-co-doped carbon nanosheets for efficient eletreocatalytic oxygen reduction reaction

Abstract The performance of metal-free oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts are far from satisfactory, thus impeding their real world application. Herein, we present a C3N4 self-templating method to construct a P and N co-doped porous carbon nanosheets with high ORR performance. The conbination of the templating effect and the synergy effect direved from N, P co-doping is revealed of utmost importance towards ORR. The optimized catalyst represents an outstanding ORR performance with an onset potential of 0.93 V and half-wave potential of 0.85 V, comparable to those of commercial Pt/C electrocatalysts (1.04 V, 0.84 V).