Phosphorus doped graphite felt allowing stabilized electrochemical interface and hierarchical pore structure for redox flow battery
Abstract The redox flow battery technology is of great potential for large scale energy storage. However, its widespread application is suffering from the challenges of low energy efficiency and considerable performance degradation in the high current cycles. Herein, we propose and develop a phosphorus doped electrode with stabilized electrochemical interface and hierarchical pore structure for cost effective flow batteries. Density functional theory calculation was first used to demonstrate the stability and activity of phosphorus doped graphite surface. On basis of theoretical design, the phosphorus doped graphite felt electrode was fabricated by a facial thermally treating method. Stabilized heteroatom doped chemical surface with abundant phosphorus containing functional groups (1.7% was observed. Beyond that, the hierarchical pore structure from macro ~20 mm) to nanoscale