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Melamine–Formaldehyde Resin Derived Carbon Catalysts with Abundant Intrinsic Defects to Afford Superior Oxygen Reduction Activity

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Abstract

More recently, sp3 defects have been reported to show great potential for enhancing the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity of metal-free carbon catalysts. However, it is still a challenge to increase the sp3 defects for achieving superior ORR activity, especially using organics as precursors by ambient-pressure pyrolysis. Herein, sp3-hybridized C and N enriched melamine–formaldehyde resin microspheres were employed for pyrolysis to increase sp3 defects in derived carbons under activation of urea. Under the synergistic effects of intrinsic characteristics of MF microspheres and the activation of sacrificial urea, the derived carbon was endowed to abundant sp3 defects and N species couple with a hierarchical porous structure. Owing to these specific features, the derived metal-free carbon catalyst showed extremely superior ORR activity, zinc-air battery performance and durability. This study provides an insight into the inheritance of sp3 carbon from the precursor to the sp3 defects in final derived carbon catalysts.

Graphical Abstract

The sp3 defects were increased by pyrolysis sp3-hybridized C and N enriched melamine–formaldehyde microspheres under the activation of urea, by which a metal-free carbon catalyst with superior ORR activity was obtained.

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Funding

We all thank to the financial support of the Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi (Program No. 2022JQ-107) and the Natural Science Foundation of China (Program No. 22178284).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Natural Functional Molecule Chemistry of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Northwest University, No. 1, Xuefu Road, Xi’an, 710127, Shaanxi, China

    Wenfang Si & Yehua Shen

  2. Shaanxi Institute of Medical Device Quality Inspection, No. 1620 Fengyun Road, Xi’an, 712046, China

    Qianjie Xie

  3. Xi’an Rare Metal Materials Research Institute Co., Ltd., No. 96 Weiyang Road, 710016, Xi’an, China

    Zheng Wang

Authors
  1. Wenfang Si
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  2. Qianjie Xie
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  3. Yehua Shen
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  4. Zheng Wang
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Contributions

WS and QX conducted the experiments and characterizations; ZW conceived of the presented idea, wrote the paper and supervised the findings of this work; all authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yehua Shen or Zheng Wang.

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Si, W., Xie, Q., Shen, Y. et al. Melamine–Formaldehyde Resin Derived Carbon Catalysts with Abundant Intrinsic Defects to Afford Superior Oxygen Reduction Activity. Catal Lett 154, 1819–1827 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-023-04412-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-023-04412-0

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