Iron doped CoP nanowires on carbon cloth: An efficient and stable electrocatalyst for Li–O2 battery

Abstract In this work, we fabricated a novel free-standing Fe doped CoP nanowire on carbon cloth (Fe–CoP/CC) electrode with high catalytic activity for Li–O2 batteries. It is unexpected that the Li–O2 battery with Fe–CoP/CC electrode demonstrated a low potential of 0.8 V and exceptional cycle stability of more than 500 cycles with no significant voltage attenuation compared with previously reported counterparts. Such excellent performance can be partly attributed to its fine nanowire structure and its large specific surface area (419.14 m2 g−1). Furthermore, iron doping plays a crucial role in improvement of battery performance because the doped Fe can modulate the internal electronic structure and optimize the absorption of intermediate products, which have been proved to be the determinant for optimizing the catalytic activity. Thus, it is believed that heterogeneous element doping in binary or ternary metal compounds is a promising strategy to fabricate high performance oxygen electrode materials for Li–O2 batteries in the next few years.