RESEARCH ARTICLE

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

  • Qing-Hui Kong 1 ,
  • Xian-Wei Lv 1 ,
  • Jin-Tao Ren 1 ,
  • Hao-Yu Wang 1 ,
  • Xin-Lian Song 1 ,
  • Feng Xu , 2 ,
  • Zhong-Yong Yuan , 1,3
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  • 1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Smart Sensing Interdisciplinary Science Center, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China
  • 2. Tianjin Workstation, Technology Center of Shanghai Tobacco Group Co. Ltd., Tianjin 300163, China
  • 3. Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education), Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
xf@sh.tobacco.com.cn, xfrong99@sina.com
zyyuan@nankai.edu.cn

Received date: 06 Jan 2023

Accepted date: 16 Feb 2023

Published date: 15 Nov 2023

Copyright

2023 Higher Education Press

Abstract

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.

Cite this article

Qing-Hui Kong , Xian-Wei Lv , Jin-Tao Ren , Hao-Yu Wang , Xin-Lian Song , Feng Xu , Zhong-Yong Yuan . “Charging” the cigarette butt: heteroatomic porous carbon nanosheets with edge-induced topological defects for enhanced oxygen evolution performance[J]. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering, 2023 , 17(11) : 1755 -1764 . DOI: 10.1007/s11705-023-2318-8

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts to declare.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 22179065, 22111530112), and the S&T project from Shanghai Tobacco Group Co. Ltd.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-023-2318-8 and is accessible for authorized users.
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