A Defect-Driven Metal-free Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Reduction in Acidic Electrolyte

By Daohao Li, Y. Jia, Guojing Chang, Jun Chen, Hongwei Liu, Jiancheng Wang, Yongfeng Hu, Yanzhi Xia, Dongjiang Yang, X. Yao. Chem, 2018

321 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary Newly N-S-C coordination-structured active sites, originating from the integrity of edged thiophene S, graphitic N, and pentagon defects, were reconstructed by N-modified S defects in carbon aerogel with a 3D hierarchical macro-meso-microporous structure. This metal-free material exhibited outstanding oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity (e.g., half-wave potentials of 0.76 V in 0.5 M H2SO4 and 0.1 M HClO4; 0.85 V in 0.1 M KOH) with good stability and high current density in both acidic and alkaline electrolytes. The experimental and computational results reveal that the pentagon S defect is essential for the ORR in acidic electrolytes because it provides a remarkable increase in reactivity. One graphitic-type N in the meta-position of the pentagon defect further significantly improves the reactivity as a result of locally precise control of the electronic structure, thus forming highly active sites for ORR in acid.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3239e01c6e5a29945c6a7e38d4c26d5227fa66fe

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In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

  1. Haotian Wang
  2. Kun Jiang
  3. Y. Jia
  4. X. Yao

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

  1. Haotian Wang
  2. Kun Jiang
  3. X. Yao
  4. Y. Jia

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