61. Bio‐Derived Wood‐Based Gas Diffusion Electrode for High‐Performance Aluminum–Air Batteries: Insights into Pore Structure

Linfeng Yu, Zhicheng Shang, Xichang Lin, Mengxuan Li, Yuanbo Liu, Longtao Ren,
Shasa Deng, Fan Zhang, Liang Luo,* Haohong Duan,* and Xiaoming Sun*
Adv. Mater. Interfaces 2023, 11, 2300355.
DOI: 10.1002/admi.202300355

Abstract
Gas reactant transport plays a crucial role in various gas-consumptionreaction-based electrochemical devices, but the pivotal performance limitationstill centers on gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs). To this end, natural cross-cutwood to prepare GDEs for aluminum–air batteries is introduced by utilizingthe ordered structure with microchannels. With cobalt–nitrogen co-dopedcarbon nanotubes as the oxygen reduction reaction catalysts grown inside thechannels of carbonized wood slice and wettability gradient modification,cherry-based GDE achieves higher power density (267 vs. 236 mW cm−2) thanthe commercial carbon fiber paper-based electrode. By bridging the identifiedcharacteristics of pore structure via deep-learning image recognitiontechnology with the permeability of other three typical kinds of (ash, pine, andoak) wood-based GDEs, it is revealed that the ratio of effective porosity to theaverage pore size is key to the performance. This work demonstrates thefeasibility of bio-derived wood-based materials for fabricatinghigh-performance GDEs and provides insights into pore structure for therational design of structured electrodes.