Electrifying Schiff-based networks as model catalysts towards deeply understanding the crucial role of sp2-carbon in nitrogen-doped carbocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

Graphitic Carbocatalysts with Pentagon Defects Synthesized from Polyperylene for Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction and Flexible Zinc-Air Batteries

“…TEM image further reveals that these lamellar structures are folded together (Figure 2b), forming an efficient hinge-like conductive network, which is beneficial to providing convenient channels for electron and ion transport. 47 HRTEM image demonstrates that GDHfCN contains both defects and graphitized structures (Figure 2c), indicating that dual molten salt treatment is indeed an effective method for preparing structures with dual functionalities. Further magnification of the graphitized portions within GDHfCN reveals typical characteristics of graphite layer stacking (Figure 2d−e), with an interlayer carbon spacing of 0.34 nm (Figure 2f).…”

Molecular Design of Porous Organic Polymer-Derived Carbonaceous Electrocatalysts for Pinpointing Active Sites in Oxygen Reduction Reaction

“…In fact, carbon materials with different topological structures, hybridized states, and spatial morphologies can exhibit considerable variations in ORR performance, even with comparable nitrogen content and configurations. Our group designed a series of nitrogen-enriched carbon composites (NEC), with controllable nitrogen configuration and regularly varied sp 2 carbon content, through a rationally designed Schiff base chemistry approach [ 61 ]. Combined with the DFT results, we found that when the quaternary nitrogen content is identical, the sp 2 carbon content had a great impact on the vertical ionization energies (VIE), which is proportional to the ORR performance.…”