4.7 Article

Nitrogen-doped carbon with a high degree of graphitization derived from biomass as high-performance electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

Journal

APPLIED SURFACE SCIENCE
Volume 396, Issue -, Pages 986-993

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.apsusc.2016.11.073

Keywords

Graphitization degree; N species; N-doped carbon; Oxygen reduction reaction; Chitosan

Funding

  1. National Natural Science Foundation of China [21437001]
  2. Programme of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities [B13012]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

It is of great interest to develop metal-free electrocatalysts derived from cheap and environmental friendly biomass for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Here we report a facile method to prepare graphene-like N-doped carbons with a high degree of graphitization and large surface area using chitosan as precursor and FeCl3 as soft template. The graphitization degree, surface area and the N species can be simply adjusted by controlling the annealing temperature. The soft template induced sample annealed at 800 degrees C (STS800) exhibits more positive onset potential than the samples annealed at 600 degrees C and 1000 degrees C (-0.08 V compared to -0.12 V and -0.15 V), which demonstrates that all of the high degree of graphitization, large surface area and the high percentages of pyridinic-N and graphitic-N play curial roles in the good ORR activity. The value of onset potential for STS800 is just 25 mV negative than that for Pt/C (-0.08 V to -0.055 V) and the ORR current density at merely -0.3 V for STS800 (-2.16 mA cm(-2)) is larger than that for Pt/C (-2.12 mA cm(-2)), which indicates its superior ORR activity even compared to Pt/C. Besides, the current for STS800 retains 95% at -0.2 V in 30000 s while that for Pt/C just retains 88%, which reveals its longer durability. With the addition of 3 M methanol, the CV curve of STS800 shows no noticeable current attenuation, indicating its good methanol tolerance. The excellent ORR activity, good methanol tolerance, and long durability demonstrate that STS800 could be a promising alternative for costly Pt-based electrocatalysts. (C) 2016 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.7
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available