Nitrogen‐Doped Hierarchical Porous Carbons Derived from Sodium Alginate as Efficient Oxygen Reduction Reaction Electrocatalysts

Abstract

The exploration of earth‐abundant and low‐cost eco‐friendly materials with an excellent electrocatalytic performance is crucial for sustainable energy development. In this work, 3 D N‐doped hierarchical porous carbon (NC) materials with an interconnected mesoporous/macroporous structure have been synthesized by the simple single‐step pyrolysis of naturally available sodium alginate in the presence of urea. The systematic investigation of the pyrolysis temperature on the performance in the oxygen reduction reaction in 0.1 m KOH solution indicates that the catalyst obtained at 900 °C (NC‐900) exhibits the best catalytic performance because of the high degree of graphitization and the unique hierarchical porous structure. Furthermore, NC‐900 exhibits an excellent durability and a remarkable resistance to methanol poisoning compared to Pt/C in alkaline solution. This work highlights the significance and potential of biomass‐derived hierarchical porous carbon materials for applications in energy conversion devices.

Defect and Doping Co-Engineered Non-Metal Nanocarbon ORR Electrocatalyst

“…Strictly speaking, the pore or hole belongs to a specific structure category in carbon-based materials, but at the same time, it could bring a lot of defects such as vacancies, voids, abundant edges, nonhexagonal topological defects (e. g., pentagon, heptagon, and Stone-Wales defects) on the corner or curvature places [93]. As mentioned above, these defects in carbon-based materials could break the electron-hole symmetry, significantly alter the charge and spin distributions, as well as tune the binding affinity surface adsorption/desorption behaviors of the oxygen-related intermediates [25,100,101]. Beyond these benefits, the porous structure with enhanced specific surface area could maximize the exposure of the active site with high utilization and facilitate the mass and charge transportation during the ORR [35,71,72,100,[102][103][104][105].…”

Enhanced Oxygen Reduction Reaction by In Situ Anchoring Fe2N Nanoparticles on Nitrogen-Doped Pomelo Peel-Derived Carbon

“…Therefore, the valorization of biomass can potentially reduce the use of fossil fuels while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions [ 1 ]. Biomass wastes, such as bananas [ 2 , 3 ], tea leaves [ 4 ], poplar catkins [ 5 ], gingko leaves [ 6 ], coconut shells [ 1 ], eggshell membranes [ 7 ], and sodium alginate [ 8 ], have been increasingly used for fabricating carbon materials. Biomass raw materials can be used to synthesize carbon materials with a high surface area and porous structure.…”

N, P, S/Fe‐codoped Carbon Derived from Feculae Bombycis as an Efficient Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

“…N 2 adsorption‐desorption measurements were performed to investigate the porous structure and specific surface areas of FBC and FBC−Fe (Figure ). The N 2 adsorption–desorption isotherms display a striking feature of a type IV profile with an H2 hysteresis loop, which reveals that FBC and FBC−Fe exhibit mesoporous features (Figure a) . The BET surface areas of FBC and FBC−Fe are 268.45 and 435.43 m 2 g −1 , respectively.…”