A Janus heteroatom-doped carbon electrocatalyst for hydrazine oxidation

Jieting Ding; Hao-Fan Wang; Xianfeng Yang; Wenbo Ju; Kui Shen; Liyu Chen; Yingwei Li

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwac231

A Janus heteroatom-doped carbon electrocatalyst for hydrazine oxidation

Natl Sci Rev. 2022 Oct 21;10(3):nwac231. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwac231. eCollection 2023 Mar.

Authors

Jieting Ding¹, Hao-Fan Wang¹, Xianfeng Yang², Wenbo Ju³, Kui Shen¹, Liyu Chen¹, Yingwei Li¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China.
² Analytical and Testing Centre, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China.
³ School of Physics and Optoelectronics, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China.

Abstract

The trade-off between the intrinsic activity and electronic conductivity of carbon materials is a major barrier for electrocatalysis. We report a Janus-type carbon material combining electrically conductive nitrogen-doped carbon (NC) and catalytically active boron, nitrogen co-doped carbon (BNC). The integration of NC with BNC can not only ensure high electronic conductivity of the hybrid, but also achieve an enhancement in the intrinsic activity of the BNC side due to the electron redistribution on their coupling interfaces. In the electrocatalytic hydrazine oxidation reaction (HzOR), the Janus carbon electrocatalyst exhibits superior activity than their single counterparts and simple physical mixtures. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the NC/BNC interfaces simultaneously promote efficient electron transport and decrease the free energy of the rate-determining step in the HzOR process.

Keywords: electronic conductivity; heteroatom-doped carbon; hydrazine oxidation reaction; intrinsic activity; metal–organic frameworks.