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Addition of Sulphur to Graphene Nanoflakes Using Thermal Plasma for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Alkaline Medium

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Abstract

A batch process is developed to generate sulphur functionalized graphene nanoflakes (S-GNFs), corresponding to nanoparticles of stacked graphene. The growth and functionalization of the catalysts are done in a single thermal plasma reactor. The GNFs are first grown through the decomposition of methane in the thermal plasma volume followed by homogeneous nucleation of the nanoparticles in the well-controlled recombining plasma stream allowing the 2-dimensional evolution of the nanoparticle morphology. The precursor feeding conditions are then changed to liquid carbon disulphide in order to generate sulphur-based functional groups on the nanoparticles. The plasma conditions and carbon disulphide injection are varied, and samples with tuneable amount of sulphur between 4 and 28 at% are obtained. The functional groups generated include polythiophene polymer partly covering the GNFs, sulphur functionalities implemented directly on the graphitic structure, and traces of orthorhombic sulphur. The S-GNFs exhibit higher electrocatalytic activity toward the oxygen reduction reaction in alkaline medium for the samples containing the highest amounts of sulphur.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Pierre Pascone for the Raman spectroscopy, Dr. Lihong Shang for the XRD measurements, and Dr Cornelia Chilian for the NAA. We also acknowledge the funding contributions from McGill Engineering Doctoral Award (MEDA), the Fonds de Recherche Nature et Technologie du Quebec (FRNTQ) and from Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plasma Processing Laboratory (PPL), McGill University, Chemical Engineering, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Ulrich Legrand, J.-L. Meunier & D. Berk

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  1. Ulrich Legrand
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  2. J.-L. Meunier
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  3. D. Berk
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Correspondence to Ulrich Legrand.

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Legrand, U., Meunier, JL. & Berk, D. Addition of Sulphur to Graphene Nanoflakes Using Thermal Plasma for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Alkaline Medium. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 37, 841–856 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-017-9787-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-017-9787-9

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