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Large-scale electrochemical fabrication of nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots and their application as corrosion inhibitor for copper

  • Metals & corrosion
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Abstract

A novel micro-zone electrochemical exfoliation method for the large-scale fabrication of nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots (N–CQDs) from pre-baked carbon anode (PCA) in ammonium bicarbonate electrolyte has been demonstrated. Therefore, an efficient (90.18 wt% utilization rate of raw material and high-yield conversion of 1.87 g(N-GQDs)g(PCA)−1 due to oxidation weight gain) and environment-friendly mass production (9.36 g in one pot) for N–CQDs really becomes promising and practical. Moreover, the N-CQDs with abundant functional groups and higher nitrogen content (30.18 at%) present strong dispersion stability and enhanced interfacial adsorption with copper substrates. By virtue of the excellent performance, we successfully applied the N–CQDs as an effective inhibitor to alleviate the corrosion of copper. Results showed the corrosion inhibition efficiency of the self-assembled N–CQDs film on the copper reached up to 96.32% at 150 mg/L N–CQDs. The mechanism for the realization of large-scale preparation and self-assembly of N–CQDs was also proposed.

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Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledged financial support provided by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M672826). More importantly, I would like to thank my PhD supervisor professor H. Xu and Y. Lu (Ocean University of China) for their spiritual support and life lessons.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BTR New Material Group Co., Ltd, Shenzhen, 518106, China

    Quanzhu Zhou, Jinsheng Lin & Youyuan Huang

  2. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Quanzhu Zhou & Guohui Yuan

  3. Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Graphene Application and Technology, Shenzhen, 518106, China

    Minjing Lin, Pengpeng Wang, Shaojun Li, Jie Tang, Youyuan Huang & Yan Zhang

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  1. Quanzhu Zhou
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Zhou, Q., Yuan, G., Lin, M. et al. Large-scale electrochemical fabrication of nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots and their application as corrosion inhibitor for copper. J Mater Sci 56, 12909–12919 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-021-06102-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-021-06102-x

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