Molten-salt/oxalate mediating Fe and N-doped mesoporous carbon sheet nanostructures towards highly efficient and durable oxygen reduction electrocatalysis

Liquid-assisted grinding/compression: a facile mechanosynthetic route for the production of high-performing Co–N–C electrocatalyst materials

“…This difference after the heat treatment can be attributed to the stabilization effect of NaCl during the pyrolysis, which was previously reported in solution-based syntheses. 23,24 Remarkably, our study indicates that the same effect is maintained in green solid-phase-based mechanosynthesis.…”

“…Overall, the decreased formation of Co-particles in NaCl-supported catalysts can be assigned to the template-induced complex stabilization effect during the pyrolysis, as it was described previously. 23,24 The TEM morphology analyses of prepared materials represented in Fig. 4 support the results of XRD analysis, showing that CoNC-LAG visually accommodates more metallic nanoparticles.…”

“…Thus, mechanochemistry was introduced to improve the sustainability and cost/energy-efficiency. 23,24 Synthetic conditions and material/time-cost are summarized and compared in Table S1, † which indicates that the introduction of mechanochemical protocol and optimization of post-synthetic treatment yielded faster synthesis and less sophisticated operation, thus, three times less time and energy consumption.…”

“…Hence preference is given to cheap and environmen-tally sustainable inorganic sacrificial templates such as (SiO 2 , MgO, Mg(OH) 2 , NaCl). [22][23][24][25][26] Efficiency of the template-assisted method was proven by recent studies, which show that the resulting catalysts exhibited greater catalytic activity compared to their non-templated analogs. 23,26,27 Despite the extensive research in this field, fabrication of M-N-C materials heavily relies on solvent-based techniques ( precipitation, deposition-precipitation, hydrothermal treatments, and impregnation), which are considered from the industrial perspective laborious and complex, and unsustainable to scale up.…”

“…[22][23][24][25][26] Efficiency of the template-assisted method was proven by recent studies, which show that the resulting catalysts exhibited greater catalytic activity compared to their non-templated analogs. 23,26,27 Despite the extensive research in this field, fabrication of M-N-C materials heavily relies on solvent-based techniques ( precipitation, deposition-precipitation, hydrothermal treatments, and impregnation), which are considered from the industrial perspective laborious and complex, and unsustainable to scale up. 28 On the other hand, solid-phase synthetic protocols are gaining traction as green and facile alternatives to solutionbased methods.…”