Biomass Derived Graphene‐Like Carbons for Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Abstract

Two‐dimensional carbons synthesis through sustainable bio‐manufacturing methods has attracted much attention in the past decade. This process facilitates low cost and facile manufacturing of porous carbon materials with specific characteristics, as well as chemical functions that differ from their bulk counterparts due to the low dimensionality. Herein, a unique graphene‐like carbon framework composed of three‐dimensionally interconnected nanosheets has been successfully fabricated via carbonization of a biomass precursor guanine and colloidal silica. The obtained two‐dimensional carbon materials, consisting of carbon nanosheets with varying sizes, can provide huge exposed areas. Owing to the merits of in situ nitrogen‐doping, particularly the optimization of nitrogen species and significant improvement in porosity, the sample GHS‐1000‐2.5 delivers the outstanding electrochemical activity towards oxygen reduction reaction in both acid and alkaline conditions, which are comparable to the commercial Pt/C catalyst and show even better performance under the same conditions. This highly efficient, facile and low‐cost strategy is expected to meet the requirements for the commercialization for fuel cells.

Biomass‐derived Graphene‐like Catalyst Material for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

“…The morphology of typical wavy and wrinkled layered graphene can be seen in Figure 2a. The appearance of this N‐doped graphene has also been recorded by previous researchers [21,23,29,30] . The space between two layers is 0.34 nm (Figure 2b) which matches the distance between two layers in graphene‐like materials [31] .…”

“…Agricultural residues consist mostly of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Thus, converting biomass to carbon structures is an alternative way of producing carbonaceous materials, such as graphene [15–21] . Different types of biomass has been used to produce carbon nanomaterials, such as biological precursors [16,22,23] as well as lignocellulosic precursors [24,25] .…”

Hydrothermal Carbon/Carbon Nanotube Composites as Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction

“…Carbon materials are a promising alternative to Pt-based electrocatalysts. Carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers, activated carbons, carbon xerogels, and graphene-based materials have been widely studied as electrocatalysts [6,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Among them, activated carbons are interesting materials, as they can be obtained by low-cost and environmentally friendly routes [16].…”

“…Nevertheless, the chemical properties of HTCs need to be modified in order to approach the outstanding electrochemical performance of Pt-electrocatalyst reference materials [23,24]. These modifications can be achieved by the incorporation of heteroatoms like nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, or boron and/or advanced carbon materials like graphene oxide or carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [9,12,13,17,[25][26][27][28]. Nitrogen is the most promising heteroatom for ORR, as pyridinic nitrogen favors the bonding of oxygen to the adjacent carbon, while the presence of quaternary nitrogen favors oxygen dissociation [7,29].…”

Glucose Doping of a Glc‐Fe‐ZIF ORR Catalyst for Proton‐Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells: Optimising Porous Structures and Improving Performance

“…Jasinski first discovered transition‐metal macrocyclic compounds for ORR catalytic activity in 1964 [9] . To address the cost issue, more nonprecious‐metal catalysts were soon investigated for ORR [10–11] . Fe/N/C materials are considered the best nonprecious metals for ORR electrocatalysts and have the highest potential to replace platinum as a catalyst [12‐18] .…”