Abstract
It is an immense challenge to develop bifunctional electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reactions (ORR) and oxygen evolution reactions (OER) in low temperature fuel cells and rechargeable metal-air batteries. Herein, a simple and cost-effective approach is developed to prepare novel materials based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and a hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanocomposite (CNT/BN) through a one-step hydrothermal method. The structural analysis and morphology study confirms the formation of a homogeneous composite and merging of few exfoliated graphene layers of CNTs on the graphitic planes of h-BN, respectively. Moreover, the electrochemical study implies that CNT/BN nanocomposite shows a significantly higher ORR activity with a single step 4-electron transfer pathway and an improved onset potential of +0.86 V versus RHE and a current density of 5.78 mA cm-2 in alkaline conditions. Interestingly, it exhibits appreciably better catalytic activity towards OER at low overpotential (η=0.38 V) under similar conditions. Moreover, this bifunctional catalyst shows substantially higher stability than a commercial Pt/C catalyst even after 5000 cycles. Additionally, this composite catalyst does not show any methanol oxidation reactions that nullify the issues due to fuel cross-over effects in direct methanol fuel cell applications.
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