Sponge-like N-doped carbon materials with Co-based nanoparticles derived from biomass as highly efficient electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction in alkaline media

Guolong Lu; Zhiyuan Li; Wenxuan Fan; Mi Wang; Shuchen Yang; Jiayi Li; Zhiyong Chang; Hang Sun; Song Liang; Zhenning Liu

doi:10.1039/c8ra10462j

Sponge-like N-doped carbon materials with Co-based nanoparticles derived from biomass as highly efficient electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction in alkaline media

RSC Adv. 2019 Feb 8;9(9):4843-4848. doi: 10.1039/c8ra10462j. eCollection 2019 Feb 5.

Authors

Guolong Lu¹, Zhiyuan Li¹, Wenxuan Fan¹, Mi Wang^{1

2}, Shuchen Yang², Jiayi Li¹, Zhiyong Chang¹, Hang Sun¹, Song Liang¹, Zhenning Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering (Ministry of Education), College of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Jilin University Changchun Jilin Province 130022 P. R. China guolonglu@jlu.edu.cn Liu_zhenning@jlu.edu.cn.
² College of Engineering, Changchun Normal University China wangmi3214@126.com.

Abstract

The development of highly efficient and low-cost catalysts towards Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR) is of significance for renewable energy technologies such as proton-exchange membrane fuel cells and metal-air batteries. This study is to utilize the biomass of soybean straw as the supporting carbon materials to prepare nitrogen and cobalt dual-doped porous biocarbon electrocatalysts (CoNASS) possessing high content of N (1.92%), embedding cobalt nanoparticles and sponge-like structure with high specific surface area (1185.00 m² g^-1) as well as appropriate pore diameter (∼2.17 nm). Meantime, CoNASS exhibits a good electrocatalytic activity with a half-wave potential of 0.786 V (vs. RHE), comparable to a half-wave potential of 0.827 V (vs. RHE) for the commercial Pt/C. The detections of electrochemical kinetics show the electron transfer number of CoNASS is in the range of 3.84-3.92, which indicates 4-electron pathway dominantly occurs in ORR. And the limiting diffusion current density of CoNASS at 1600 rpm is around 5.8 mA cm^-2 slightly higher than that of the benchmark Pt/C (5.6 mA cm^-2). This work opens a new avenue to utilize soybean straw, one of agriculture waste of large quantity, to prepare high efficient and low-cost catalysts for ORR.