Abstract
Exploring inexpensive and highly efficient electrocatalyst to decrease the overpotential of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is one of the key issues for the commercialization of energy conversion and storage devices. Heteroatom-doped carbon materials have attracted increasing attention as promising electrocatalysts. Herein, we prepared a highly active electrocatalyst, nitrogen, sulfur co-doped carbon nanofibers (N/S-CNF), via in situ chemical oxidative polymerization of methylene blue on the bacterial cellulose nanofibers, followed by carbonization process. It was found that the type of nitrogen/sulfur source, methylene blue and poly(methylene blue), has significantly influence on the catalytic activity of the resultant carbon nanofibers. Benefiting from the porous structure and high surface area (729 m2/g) which favors mass transfer and exposing of active N and S atoms, the N/S-CNF displays high catalytic activity for the ORR in alkaline media with a half-wave potential of about 0.80 V, and better stability and stronger methanol tolerance than that of 20 wt % Pt/C, indicating great potential application in the field of alkaline fuel cell.
Highlights
The development of low-cost and efficient energy conversion and storage technologies is of vital importance in alleviating the energy crisis and environmental protection
Toward the N atom of poly(methylene blue) (PMB) due to the difference in electronegativity between them. All these results atom of PMB due to the difference in electronegativity between them. All these results reveal that the reveal that the hybrid of bacterial cellulose (BC)/PMB has been successfully prepared
Belongs to the mesoporous material and has the smallest surface area. These results suggest that the Methylene blue (MB) or its decomposition product destroyed the micro-pores of C-BC, but the PMB promoted to form more micro-pores in the C-BC, probably by chemical etching the carbon matrix
Summary
The development of low-cost and efficient energy conversion and storage technologies is of vital importance in alleviating the energy crisis and environmental protection. As the high price and unsatisfactory methanol tolerance of Pt have become a bottleneck of its extensive application in the fuel cells and metal-air batteries, the development of cheap and steady non-platinum catalysts is a practical and urgent issue [5,6,7,8]. In such conditions, Catalysts 2018, 8, 269; doi:10.3390/catal8070269 www.mdpi.com/journal/catalysts. Catalysts 2018, 8, 269 nitrogen doped carbon nanomaterials (N-Cs) has recently been expanding rapidly because of excellent catalytic activity and high stability for the ORR in alkali media, and many techniques have been developed to prepare high active N-Cs as electrocatalyst for the ORR [9,10,11,12,13,14].
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