Abstract
A series of nanocomposites of cobalt embedded in N-doped nanoporous carbons, carbon nanotubes or hollow carbon onions have been synthesized by a one-step carbonization of metal-organic-framework ZIF-67. The effect of the carbonization temperature on the structural evolution of the resulting nanocomposites has been investigated in detail. Among the as-synthesized materials, the cobalt/nanoporous N-doped carbon composites have demonstrated excellent electrocatalytic activities and durability towards oxygen reduction reaction in alkaline medium. Compared to the benchmark Pt/C catalyst, the optimized Co@C-800 (carbonized at 800 °C) exhibited high oxygen reduction reaction activity with an onset potential of 0.92 V, and a half-wave potential of 0.82 V. Moreover, the optimized Co@C-800 also showed enhanced electrocatalytic activity towards oxygen evolution reaction from water splitting, with a low onset potential of 1.43 V and a potential of 1.61 V at 10 mA cm−2 current density. This work offered a simple solution to develop metal-organic-framework-derived materials for highly efficient electrochemical applications.
Highlights
Developing highly efficient electrocatalysts for energy technologies has attracted increasingly intense attention due to the worldwide continuously growing demand in energy[1]
Various metal/heteroatom-doped carbon composites synthesized from the Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) at relatively low temperatures below 1100 °C have been reported in literature[24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37], and their applications for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) have been studied[24, 27, 28, 30,31,32,33,34,35,36]
We report the structural evolution of MOF-derived materials ranging from cobalt-embedded in N-doped porous carbons to hollow carbon onions
Summary
Developing highly efficient electrocatalysts for energy technologies has attracted increasingly intense attention due to the worldwide continuously growing demand in energy[1]. Various metal/heteroatom-doped carbon composites synthesized from the MOFs at relatively low temperatures below 1100 °C have been reported in literature[24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37], and their applications for ORR have been studied[24, 27, 28, 30,31,32,33,34,35,36]. Cobalt/porous carbon composites derived from ZIF-67 exhibited excellent ORR performance[24, 27, 28, 37].
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