General and Ultrafast Photothermal Synthesis of Atomic Metal‐Nitrogen‐Carbon Catalysts for H₂O₂ Electrosynthesis

Abstract Atomic metal‐nitrogen‐carbon catalysts (M‐N‐Cs) are promising electrocatalysts for the two‐electron oxygen reduction reaction (2e⁻ ORR) for the green production of H₂O₂. However, the conventional synthetic methods of M‐N‐Cs typically suffer from prolonged possessing time and high energy consumption. Herein, a flash light irradiation‐assisted transient pyrolysis strategy is reported for the rapid and facile synthesis of a Co‐N‐C catalyst consisting of atomic Co‐N₄ sites supported on graphene. The resultant Co‐N‐C is highly active and selective as an electrocatalyst for the 2e⁻ ORR, with a H₂O₂ selectivity up to 94.2%, high mass activity of 113.9 A g⁻¹, high turnover frequency of 34.8 s⁻¹, and an average H₂O₂ production rate of 12.1 mol g⁻¹ h⁻¹ with an accumulated H₂O₂ concentration up to 15.2 mmol L⁻¹ when evaluated with a three‐phase flow cell setup. Additionally, this synthetic strategy can be readily expanded to prepare other types of M‐N‐Cs (M = Fe, Ni, Cu, and noble metal Ir) with similar M‐N₄ configurations by simply changing the metal precursors, demonstrating the generality of this method. The rapid and general flash‐assisted synthetic strategy for M‐N‐Cs can provide a readily accessible material library and platform for investigating their catalytic properties in different energy conversion processes.