Water-dispersible, sulfonated hyperbranched poly(ether-ketone) grafted multiwalled carbon nanotubes as oxygen reduction catalysts

Gyung-Joo Sohn; Hyun-Jung Choi; In-Yup Jeon; Dong Wook Chang; Liming Dai; Jong-Beom Baek

doi:10.1021/nn301863d

Water-dispersible, sulfonated hyperbranched poly(ether-ketone) grafted multiwalled carbon nanotubes as oxygen reduction catalysts

ACS Nano. 2012 Jul 24;6(7):6345-55. doi: 10.1021/nn301863d. Epub 2012 Jun 19.

Authors

Gyung-Joo Sohn¹, Hyun-Jung Choi, In-Yup Jeon, Dong Wook Chang, Liming Dai, Jong-Beom Baek

Affiliation

¹ Interdisciplinary School of Green Energy/Low-Dimensional Carbon Materials Center, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, 100 Banyeon, Ulsan 689-798, South Korea.

PMID: 22680297
DOI: 10.1021/nn301863d

Abstract

To endorse sufficient water affinity to multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), dendritic hyperbranched poly(ether-ketone) (HPEK) was first covalently grafted to the surface of a MWCNT via a Friedel-Crafts acylation reaction. The resultant HPEK-grafted MWCNT (HPEK-g-MWCNT) was subsequently sulfonated in chlorosulfonic acid to produce sulfonated HPEK-g-MWCNT (SHPEK-g-MWCNT), which is dispersible well in water showing a zeta potential value of -57.8 mV. The SHPEK-g-MWCNT paper simply formed by filtration of aqueous dispersion has a sheet resistance as low as 63 Ω/sq. Its thin film shows a high electrocatalytic activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Thus, the newly produced water-dispersible MWCNT is a new class of high performance cathode material for ORR.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.