The fabrication of graphene-based polymer composite materials is of interest and significance from an academic and an application viewpoint. The widely used method to obtain such composites was liquid-phase blend of graphene nanosheets (GNSs) and polymer solutions followed by casting or heat pressing. Until now, the challenge of dispersing the GNSs uniformly in the polymer matrix to form controllable and regular structure still remains. Here, we developed a unique "particleconstructing" method for fabricating highly ordered 3D graphene-based polymer composite materials, throughout which the GNSs formed intact, uniform and welldefined network structure. The strategy contains two steps: wrapping polymer microspheres with GNSs and mold-compressing them at room temperature, followed by an appropriate heat treatment. The composite materials exhibited outstanding electrical properties involving extremely low percolation threshold and much higher conductivity. The method can be easily extended to fabricate highly ordered GNS aerogels and more GNS-based composite materials. The results represent an important step toward developing GNS-based composite materials with high performance.
Pt-based electrocatalysts are the most popular for direct alcohol fuel cells, but their performances easily deteriorate for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) at the cathode because of the alcohol crossover effect. Herein, we report the novel Pt electrocatalyst encapsulated inside nitrogen-doped carbon nanocages (Pt@NCNC), which presents excellent alcohol-tolerant ORR activity and durability in acidic media, far superior to the Pt counterpart immobilized outside the nanocages (Pt/NCNC). The superb performance is correlated with the molecule-sieving effect of the micropores penetrating through the shells of the nanocages, which admit the small-sized oxygen and ions but block the large-sized alcohols into the nanocages. This mechanism is confirmed by examining the size dependence of ORR and alcohol oxidation activities by regulating the micropores sizes. This study provides a promising strategy to develop the superior alcohol-tolerant Pt-based ORR electrocatalyst in acidic media.
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