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Natural tea-leaf-derived, ternary-doped 3D porous carbon as a high-performance electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction

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Abstract

To commercialize fuel cells and metal-air batteries, cost-effective, highly active catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) must be developed. Herein, we describe the development of low-cost, heteroatom (N, P, Fe) ternary-doped, porous carbons (HDPC). These materials are prepared by one-step pyrolysis of natural tea leaves treated with an iron salt, without any chemical and physical activation. The natural structure of the tea leaves provide a 3D hierarchical porous structure after carbonization. Moreover, heteroatom containing organic compounds in tea leaves act as precursors to functionalize the resultant carbon frameworks. In addition, we found that the polyphenols present in tea leaves act as ligands, reacting with Fe ions to form coordination compounds; these complexes acted as the precursors for Fe and N active sites. After pyrolysis, the as-prepared HDPC electrocatalysts, especially HDPC-800 (pyrolyzed at 800 °C), had more positive onsets, half-wave potentials, and higher catalytic activities for the ORR, which proceeds via a direct four-electron reaction pathway in alkaline media, similar to commercial Pt/C catalysts. Furthermore, HDPC-X also showed enhanced durability and better tolerance to methanol crossover and CO poisoning effects in comparison to commercial Pt/C, making them promising alternatives for state-of-the-art ORR electrocatalysts for electrochemical energy conversion. The method used here provides valuable guidelines for the design of high-performance ORR electrocatalysts from natural sources at the industrial scale.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bio-inspired Smart Interfacial Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Zhaoyan Guo, Zhen Xiao, Guangyuan Ren, Guozheng Xiao & Ying Zhu

  2. Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 10900, USA

    Liming Dai

  3. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Lei Jiang

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  1. Zhaoyan Guo
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  2. Zhen Xiao
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  3. Guangyuan Ren
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  4. Guozheng Xiao
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  5. Ying Zhu
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  6. Liming Dai
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  7. Lei Jiang
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Correspondence to Ying Zhu or Liming Dai.

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Guo, Z., Xiao, Z., Ren, G. et al. Natural tea-leaf-derived, ternary-doped 3D porous carbon as a high-performance electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction. Nano Res. 9, 1244–1255 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-016-1020-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-016-1020-2

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