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Killing Two Birds with One Stone: A Highly Active Tubular Carbon Catalyst with Effective N Doping for Oxygen Reduction and Hydrogen Evolution Reactions

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Abstract

The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are two of the core reactions that occur in fuel cells and water electrolysis devices. Heteroatom-doped carbon materials are promising metal-free electrocatalysts to improve the conversion efficiency of these devices. To optimize the nanostructures of such carbon-based catalysts, herein, we reported an effective template method to synthesize N doped carbon nanotubes by using polydopamine as a precursor. The use of the ZnO nanowire not only serves as a self-sacrificial template to direct the formation of the nanotube, but also greatly extends the porosity of the carbon nanotube. Moreover, the polydopamine precursor also leads to effective N doping. An optimized sample, NCNT-900, shows high ORR performance comparable with that of Pt/C as well as good HER performance in both alkaline and acid media, making it one of the most effective carbon-based HER catalysts. This strategy offers an opportunity to synthesize catalysts with higher activity by rational design of a carbon precursor with higher N content or multi-heteroatom co-doping.

Graphical Abstract

Nitrogen doped carbon nanotube with high performance for both ORR and HER was synthesized using ZnO nanowires as template. The obtained materials show effective N doping that provides abundant active sites, high surface area and unique textural parameters that can effectively enhance mass transfer. When used for electrocatalysts, NCNT-900 shows high ORR performance comparable with that of Pt/C and good HER performance in both alkaline and acid media.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported financially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51772039), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University (DUT18LK13) and the Research Center for Solar Light Energy Conversion, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, School of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Panjin Campus, Panjin, 124221, China

    Yanqiang Li, Huiyong Huang, Chao Wang & Anmin Liu

  2. Graduate School of Life Science and Systems Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology, 2-4 Hibikino, Wakamatsu, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, 808-0196, Japan

    Tingli Ma

  3. State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, iChEM, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, 116023, China

    Siru Chen

Authors
  1. Yanqiang Li
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  2. Huiyong Huang
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  3. Siru Chen
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  4. Chao Wang
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  5. Anmin Liu
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Correspondence to Yanqiang Li, Siru Chen or Tingli Ma.

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Li, Y., Huang, H., Chen, S. et al. Killing Two Birds with One Stone: A Highly Active Tubular Carbon Catalyst with Effective N Doping for Oxygen Reduction and Hydrogen Evolution Reactions. Catal Lett 149, 486–495 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-018-2636-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-018-2636-5

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