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Construction of Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Nanosheets for Efficient and Stable Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysis

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Abstract

Two-dimensional nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets (GCNS) have been fabricated through polymerization and carbonization using resorcinol, formaldehyde, aniline and graphene oxide as reactants. Herein, aniline serves as a nitrogen source for doping and graphene oxide is employed as the structure directing agent for nanosheet generation to engineer the structure. The resultant GCNS display a high surface area of 351 m2 g−1 and N doping content of 1.06 wt.%. Moreover, the obtained electrocatalysts demonstrate superior electrocatalytic oxygen reduction characteristics with an onset potential of 0.920 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode, diffusion-limiting current density (− 4.24 mA cm−2) and improved stability in an alkaline medium. The optimized oxygen reduction performance can be attributed to the rapid mass transfer and abundant active sites owing to the synergistic coupling effects arising from heteroatom dopants and structure modulation. On one hand, heteroatom doping provides enhance electronic conductivity with abundant defects and effective charge diffusion with improved surface wettability, which favors the electrocatalytic performances. On the other hand, the unique two-dimensional structure of the resultant GCNS provides good electrolyte accessibility and short ion/electron diffusion distances. This work demonstrates an effective construction of targeted heteroatom doping carbon nanosheets with surface functionalities and structure modification as carbon-based catalysts with advanced electrocatalytic performances.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Doctoral Scientific Research Start-Up Foundation of Bengbu University (Grant No. BBXY2018KYQD16), Anhui Department of Education University Natural Science Research Project of Anhui Province (Grant No. KJ2019A0848, Grant No. KJ2019A0851 and Grant No. KJ2019ZD62) and Education Department of Jilin Province (JJKH20190584KJ).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials and Chemical Engineering, Bengbu University, Bengbu, 233030, China

    Zhong Wu, Xianfeng Zhang & Jinlong Ge

  2. Anhui Provincial Engineering Laboratory of Silicon-Based Materials, Bengbu, 233030, China

    Zhong Wu, Xianfeng Zhang & Jinlong Ge

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, 130022, China

    Dan Xu

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  1. Zhong Wu
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  2. Xianfeng Zhang
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Wu, Z., Zhang, X., Xu, D. et al. Construction of Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Nanosheets for Efficient and Stable Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysis. J. Electron. Mater. 50, 1349–1357 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-020-08660-3

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