Carbon-based electrocatalysts for advanced energy conversion and storage

Abstract

A review of the recent advances, along with perspectives and challenges, in the fast-growing field of carbon-based electrocatalysts.

Carbon-Based Metal-Free Electrocatalysis for Energy Conversion, Energy Storage, and Environmental Protection

“…In fact, the type of heteroatom dopant is of vital importance in the performance enhancement for metal-free carbon catalysts. In particular, nitrogen can exist in many different forms in N-doped carbon catalysts, such as pyridine-like, pyrrole-like, graphitic nitrogen, and pyridine-N-oxide [3,90]. Therefore, the understanding of the effects of N-dopant chemical nature on electrocatalytic performance is of great importance.…”

“…Because of high abundance, high electrical conductivity, structure tunability at the atomic level, high selectivity, strong tolerance to acidic/alkaline conditions, and eco-friendliness [4,5], many nanostructured carbon materials have been developed as metal-free catalysts with impressive electrocatalytic performances for ORR, HER, OER, and/or CO 2 RR, key reactions involved in energy conversion/storage and environmental protection processes [3,[6][7][8][9]. The electrocatalytic performances of metal-free carbon-based catalysts were further found to be tuneable through the regulation of the nanoparticles size, macrostructures, and electrode architectures, along with the introduction of heteroatoms (doping) and defects [8,9].…”

“…Because of accelerating global energy consumption and growing environmental concerns, the need to develop clean and sustainable energy conversion and storage systems, such as fuel cells, dye-sensitized solar cells, metalair batteries, and Li-CO 2 batteries, is of great importance [1][2][3]. These renewable energy technologies rely on several important reactions, including oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR), all of which require catalysts.…”

Design of 3D Graphene‐Oxide Spheres and Their Derived Hierarchical Porous Structures for High Performance Supercapacitors

“…[14] The best examples are carbon based-nanostructures, which are also highly abundant and can be readily synthesized and scaled up. [15] Specifically, the desirable porosity, density, and surface functionality can be tailored by the selection of appropriate carbon precursors and synthesis techniques. For instance, porous carbons with ultrahigh specific surface area, generated by chemical activation of biomass or petroleum pitch, show largely enhanced energy storage.…”

Lateral Size Effects of Two-dimensional IrO₂ Nanosheets towards the Oxygen Evolution Reaction Activity

“…Platinum group metal oxides such as IrO 2 and RuO 2 are typically used as the electrocatalyst for OER in acidic media. [4][5][6] RuO 2 shows the smallest overpotential for OER, and IrO 2 exhibits the second smallest overpotential. 7 However, RuO 2 is less stable than IrO 2 , which is due to the formation of soluble RuO 4 above 1.45 V vs. RHE.…”