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Biomass derived porous carbon for superior electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction

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Abstract

The preparation of porous carbon from biomass flour as high-performance electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) was reported in this paper. The fast and vigorous pyrolysis of flour was induced in the presence of magnesium nitrate, by which MgO nanoparticles were introduced as nano-template to create numerous nanopores and to increase the specific surface area (SSA). The pore structure, SSA and elemental dopant were influenced by the ratio of biomass to magnesium nitrate and calcination temperature. A highly hierarchical micro-meso-macroporous carbon, which was calcined at 1000 °C and had a high SSA of 1880 m2 g−1, exhibited the best ORR performance in terms of fast ORR kinetic, superior stability and excellent methanol tolerance.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20200635), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52006238). A part of the characterization work was conducted at Hokkaido University, supported by the “Nanotechnology Platform” Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China,No. 52006238,Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province,No. BK20200635

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Low-Carbon Energy and Power Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221116, China

    Chunyu Zhu & Bo Zhao

  2. Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-8628, Japan

    Chunyu Zhu, Manami Takata, Yoshitaka Aoki & Hiroki Habazaki

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  1. Chunyu Zhu
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  2. Bo Zhao
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  3. Manami Takata
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  4. Yoshitaka Aoki
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  5. Hiroki Habazaki
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Contributions

Chunyu Zhu and Bo Zhao wrote the main manuscript text, Manami Takata did the experiment and summarized the data, Yoshitaka Aoki and Hiroki Habazaki revised the paper. All authors reviewed the manuscript

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Correspondence to Chunyu Zhu.

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Zhu, C., Zhao, B., Takata, M. et al. Biomass derived porous carbon for superior electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction. J Appl Electrochem 53, 1379–1388 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-023-01859-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-023-01859-2

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