2D Porous Carbons prepared from Layered Organic-Inorganic Hybrids and their Use as Oxygen-Reduction Electrocatalysts

Shuang Li; Chong Cheng; Hai-Wei Liang; Xinliang Feng; Arne Thomas

doi:10.1002/adma.201700707

2D Porous Carbons prepared from Layered Organic-Inorganic Hybrids and their Use as Oxygen-Reduction Electrocatalysts

Adv Mater. 2017 Jul;29(28). doi: 10.1002/adma.201700707. Epub 2017 May 29.

Authors

Shuang Li¹, Chong Cheng², Hai-Wei Liang³, Xinliang Feng³, Arne Thomas¹

Affiliations

¹ Functional Materials, Department of Chemistry, Technische Universität Berlin, Hardenbergstr. 40, 10623, Berlin, Germany.
² Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Freie Universität Berlin, Takustrasse 3, 14195, Berlin, Germany.
³ Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (CFAED), Department of Chemistry and Food Chemistry, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062, Dresden, Germany.

PMID: 28556383
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201700707

Abstract

2D porous carbon nanomaterials have attracted tremendous attention in different disciplines especially for electrochemical catalysis. The significant advantage of such 2D materials is that nearly all their surfaces are exposed to the electrolyte and can take part in the electrochemical reaction. Here, a versatile active-salt-templating strategy to efficiently synthesize 2D porous carbon nanosheets from layered organic-inorganic hybrids is presented. The resulting heteroatom-doped carbon nanosheets (NFe/CNs) exhibit exceptional performance for the oxygen-reduction reaction and in Zn-air battery electrodes. The activity of the best catalyst within a series of NFe/CNs exceeds the performance of conventional carbon-supported Pt catalysts in terms of onset potential (0.930 vs 0.915 V of Pt/C), half-wave potential (0.859 vs 0.816 V of Pt/C), long-time stability, and methanol tolerance. Also, when applied as a cathode catalyst in a zinc-air battery the NFe/CNs presented here outperform commercial Pt/C catalysts.

Keywords: 2D metal-organic hybrid materials; active-salt-templating; dopamine-FeCl3·6H2O; heteroatom-doped carbon; oxygen-reduction reaction.