Facile Preparation of Metallic Sites Anchored Nanocarbon Materials for Electrocatalysis

Abstract Herein, a novel method, heat mechanochemical synthesis (HMCS), is reported for facile and scalable preparation of electrocatalysts with metallic sites anchored on carbon materials. The method simultaneously provides mechanical energy and heat to drive reaction, by which target metal atoms are efficiently trapped in N‐doped and defect‐rich carbon that prepared in advance (NC). The advantages of this method are: (1) high contents of metals at the outermost surface; (2) unique metal sites formed under collisions with mechanical energy; and (3) not annealed at high temperatures, which would retain some unique active sites on the materials. A series of unitary transition metal (Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, or Zn) superficially anchored carbons are obtained via the HMCS. More than this, it is quite convenient to prepare multiple metals, such as combinations among these metals, highly dispersed and anchored on the carbon materials in one time. As a representative, the as‐prepared Fe‐NC (denoted as FeNC_HM in context) is investigated in detail as catalyst for ORR and Zn‐air battery applications. The authors envision that the method of HMCS provides a good support of surface engineering for preparation of metals sites containing carbon at large scale.