Electrocatalytic two-electron oxygen reduction over nitrogen doped hollow carbon nanospheres

Zhaoquan Xu; Ziyu Ma; Kai Dong; Jie Liang; Longcheng Zhang; Yongsong Luo; Qian Liu; Jinmao You; Zhesheng Feng; Dongwei Ma; Yan Wang; Xuping Sun

doi:10.1039/d2cc01238c

Electrocatalytic two-electron oxygen reduction over nitrogen doped hollow carbon nanospheres

Chem Commun (Camb). 2022 Apr 19;58(32):5025-5028. doi: 10.1039/d2cc01238c.

Authors

Zhaoquan Xu^{1

2}, Ziyu Ma³, Kai Dong¹, Jie Liang¹, Longcheng Zhang¹, Yongsong Luo¹, Qian Liu⁴, Jinmao You⁵, Zhesheng Feng², Dongwei Ma³, Yan Wang², Xuping Sun^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, Sichuan, China. xpsun@uestc.edu.cn.
² School of Materials and Energy, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, Sichuan, China. wy@uestc.edu.cn.
³ Key Laboratory for Special Functional Materials of Ministry of Education, and School of Materials Science and Engineering, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, Henan, China. madw@henu.edu.cn.
⁴ Institute for Advanced Study, Chengdu University, Chengdu 610106, Sichuan, China.
⁵ College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Shaoxing University, Shaoxing 312000, Zhejiang, China.

PMID: 35373790
DOI: 10.1039/d2cc01238c

Abstract

The two-electron oxygen reduction reaction (2e^- ORR) has become a hopeful alternative for production of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), but its practical feasibility is hindered by the lack of efficient electrocatalysts to achieve high activity and selectivity. Herein, we successfully synthesized outstanding nitrogen doped hollow carbon nanospheres (NHCSs) for electrochemical production of H₂O₂. In 0.1 M KOH, NHCSs exhibit superior and sustained catalytic activity for the 2e^- ORR with an unordinary selectivity of 96.6%. Impressively, such NHCSs manifest an ultrahigh H₂O₂ yield rate of 7.32 mol g_cat.^-1 h^-1 and a high faradaic efficiency of 96.7% at 0.5 V in an H-cell system. Density functional theory calculations were performed to further reveal the catalytic mechanism involved.