“Charging” the cigarette butt: heteroatomic porous carbon nanosheets with edge-induced topological defects for enhanced oxygen evolution performance

• Published in: Frontiers of chemical science and engineering 2023-11, Vol.17 (11), p.1755-1764
• Main Authors: Kong, Qing-Hui, Lv, Xian-Wei, Ren, Jin-Tao, Wang, Hao-Yu, Song, Xin-Lian, Xu, Feng, Yuan, Zhong-Yong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Carbon; Catalysts; Catalytic activity; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Cigarettes; Cobalt; Defects; Electron transfer; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Iron; Metal air batteries; Nanoparticles; Nanosheets; Nanotechnology; Nitrogen; Open circuit voltage; Oxygen evolution reactions; Pyrolysis; Raw materials; Research Article; Topology; Zinc-oxygen batteries
• ISSN: 2095-0179; 2095-0187
• DOI: 10.1007/s11705-023-2318-8

Owing to the complexity of electron transfer pathways, the sluggish oxygen evolution reaction process is defined as the bottleneck for the practical application of Zn-air batteries. In this effort, metal nanoparticles (Co, Ni, Fe, etc.) encapsulated within nitrogen-doped carbon materials with abundant edge sites were synthesized by one-step pyrolysis treatment using cigarette butts as raw materials, which can drastically accelerate the overall rate of oxygen evolution reaction by facilitating the adsorption of oxygenated intermediates by the edge-induced topological defects. The prepared catalyst of nitrogen-doped carbon porous nanosheets loaded with Co nanoparticles (Co@NC-500) exhibits enhanced catalytic activity toward oxygen evolution reaction, with a low overpotential of 350 mV at the current density of 10 mA·cm −2 . Furthermore, the Zn-air battery assembled with Co@NC-500 catalyst demonstrates a desirable performance affording an open-circuit potential of 1.336 V and power density of 33.6 mW·cm −2 , indicating considerable practical application potential.