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

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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.

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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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Smart Sensing Interdisciplinary Science Center, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300350, China

    Qing-Hui Kong, Xian-Wei Lv, Jin-Tao Ren, Hao-Yu Wang, Xin-Lian Song & Zhong-Yong Yuan

  2. Tianjin Workstation, Technology Center of Shanghai Tobacco Group Co. Ltd., Tianjin, 300163, China

    Feng Xu

  3. Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education), Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Zhong-Yong Yuan

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  1. Qing-Hui Kong
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  2. Xian-Wei Lv
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  4. Hao-Yu Wang
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  5. Xin-Lian Song
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  6. Feng Xu
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Correspondence to Feng Xu or Zhong-Yong Yuan.

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

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Kong, QH., Lv, XW., Ren, JT. et al. “Charging” the cigarette butt: heteroatomic porous carbon nanosheets with edge-induced topological defects for enhanced oxygen evolution performance. Front. Chem. Sci. Eng. 17, 1755–1764 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-023-2318-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-023-2318-8

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