N, P-dual doped carbon with trace Co and rich edge sites as highly efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

Abstract

Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is key to fuel cells and metal-air batteries which are considered as the alternative clean energy. Various carbon materials have been widely researched as ORR electrocatalysts. It has been accepted that heteroatom doping and exposure of the edge sites can effectively improve the activity of carbon materials. In this work, we used a simple method to prepare a novel N, P-dual doped carbon-based catalyst with many holes on the surface. In addition, trace level Co doping in the carbon material forming Co-N-C active species can further enhance the ORR performance. On one hand, the doping can adjust the electronic structure of carbon atoms, which would induce more active sites for ORR. And on the other hand, the holes formed on the surface of carbon nanosheets would expose more edge sites and can improve the intrinsic activity of carbon. Due to the heteroatom doping and the exposed edge sites, the prepared carbon materials showed highly excellent ORR performance, close to that of commercial Pt/C.

A general route via formamide condensation to prepare atomically dispersed metal–nitrogen–carbon electrocatalysts for energy technologies

“…[1][2][3]12 Therefore, extraordinary catalytic activity and selectivity can be expected from the MNC-based SAECs due to their largely altered and promoted reaction pathway. [13][14][15][16] Despite their extremely promising potential, most of the SAECs are currently synthesized through pyrolysis of metal salts with nitrogen and carbon sources, [17][18][19][20][21] including small molecules (such as pyrrole, 22 sodium alginate, 23 and dopamine 9 ), polymers (such as polyaniline, 24 polyphthalocyanine 8 ), carbon materials (such as graphene oxide, 17 heteroatom-doped carbon, 19 ) and MXene. 26 However, the weak coordination bonding between the metal cations and N/C sources, and the inevitable hightemperature annealing for acquiring conductivity often result in low-quality SAECs that suffer from metal aggregation.…”

KIT‐6 Three Dimensional Template Derived Mesoporous Carbon for Oxygen Reduction Reaction: Effect of Template Removal on Catalytic Activity

“…Singh et al have first noticed removal of mesoporous silica template by PVDF etching agent that shows high surface area (2245 m 2 g ‐1 ) mesoporous carbon replica and used as efficient catalyst for CO 2 adsorbent and supercapacitor applications. It is necessary to emphasis here that the mass transfer activity of catalyst depends on the surface area, more number of active sites, synthesis method, doping of hetero atom, graphitization temperature and electron transfer properties Importantly, the pre‐activation of mesoporous carbon replica also leads to enhancement of mass transfer activity by changing the surface physicochemical properties.…”

Investigation on Template Etching Process of SBA‐15 Derived Ordered Mesoporous Carbon on Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction Reaction

“…The vibrational band at 1590 cm −1 termed as G band and that corresponded to the sp 2 hybridized 2D hexagonal structure. The vibrational band at 1338 cm −1 was represented as D band and that corresponded to the sp 3 hybridization which raised from the defects of the etched products ,. The (I D /I G ) value was used to determine the bonding type, domain size and internal stress in our synthesized OMC materials.…”