Three-dimensional interconnected nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbons as active electrode materials for application in electrocatalytic oxygen reduction and supercapacitors
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
In this paper, a series of nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbons (NMCs) with three-dimensional (3D) interconnected mesopores have been prepared using flour as carbon source, dicyanamide as nitrogen source and colloidal silica as hard template. The optimized material (NMC-4) prepared with the colloidal silica/flour mass ratio of 4 has a high nitrogen doping level of 5.69 at.% and large specific surface area of 995 m2 g−1 as well as 3D interconnected mesopores (12.9 nm). As the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalyst among various NMCs, NMC-4 exhibits the superior performance and much better stability and methanol crossover with a four-electron dominant reaction pathway compared to commercial 20 wt% Pt/C. Furthermore, as a supercapacitor (SC) electrode material, NMC-4 exhibits a high specific capacitance of 178.5 F g−1 at a current density of 0.5 A g−1 and long cycle life (94.5% capacity retention after 5000 cycles). It also shows a good rate capacity as 76.1% of original specific capacitance remains when the current density increases from 0.5 to 20 A g−1. The high-performance of NMCs results from the synergetic effects of 3D interconnected mesopores, large surface area, and high N-doping level, enabling fast mass transport and electron transfer during the electrochemical process. This work provides a facile and efficient strategy to heteroatom-doped carbons from extensively available biomass, showing great potentials in electrocatalysis, energy storage, and other applications.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 230-240 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Journal of colloid and interface science |
Volume | 527 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2018 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
PubMed | 29800872 |
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Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Biomass, Electrocatalysis, Energy storage, Nitrogen-doped carbons, Three-dimensional interconnected mesopores