Hydrothermal-Induced Formation of Well-Defined Hollow Carbons with Curvature-Activated N-C Sites for Zn-Air Batteries.
Chunxiao LiWanli XuLiangwen YeJingjun LiuFeng WangPublished in: Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) (2021)
Metal-free carbons have been regarded as one of the promising materials alternatives to precious-metal catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) due to their high activity and stability. In this paper, well-defined N-doped hollow carbons (NHCs) are firstly synthesized by using an ammonia-based hydrothermal synthesis that is environmentally friendly and suitable for mass production in industry and a commercial black carbon as raw material. Moreover, the shell thickness of the NHCs can be easily tuned by this hydrothermal strategy. Zn-air battery test results reveal shell thickness-dependent activity and durability for ORR over the NHCs, which exceeds that obtained by commercial Pt/C (20 wt %). The enhanced battery performance can be attributed to the curvature-activated N-C moieties on the hollow carbon surface, which served as the main active sites for ORR as evidenced by DFT calculations. The proposed approach may open a way for designing curved hollow carbons with high graphitization degree and dopant nitrogen level for metal-air batteries or fuel cells.
Keyphrases
- metal organic framework
- anaerobic digestion
- molecularly imprinted
- highly efficient
- sewage sludge
- solid state
- induced apoptosis
- heavy metals
- density functional theory
- optical coherence tomography
- municipal solid waste
- quantum dots
- molecular dynamics
- genome wide
- diabetic rats
- cell cycle arrest
- room temperature
- oxidative stress
- molecular docking
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- ionic liquid
- risk assessment
- cell proliferation
- single cell
- drug induced
- dna methylation
- signaling pathway
- low cost