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Effect of Outer Carbon Layer Thickness of Carbon-covered N-doped Hollow Carbon Nanospheres on Its Electrocatalytic Performance

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Abstract

Hollow nitrogen-doped porous carbon materials covered with different thicknesses of carbon layers were synthesized to assist evaluation of the influence of nitrogen atom on the surrounding carbon atoms. The designed carbon-based materials were synthesized through pyrolysis of surface-attached block copolymer layers on silica nanoparticles with different thicknesses of the second block of grafted polymer chains, followed by removal of silica templates. The experimental results reveal that coverage a carbon layer with proper thickness can improve the oxygen reaction reduction activity of nitrogen-doped carbon materials as evidenced by the positive shift of half-wave potential in linear scanning voltammetry response curves. The conclusions may provide a reference work on understanding the active sites and designing materials with superior electrochemical performance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Bowen Tao  (陶博文), Xiangchuan Pan & Haining Zhang  (张海宁)

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  1. Bowen Tao  (陶博文)
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  2. Xiangchuan Pan
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  3. Haining Zhang  (张海宁)
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Haining Zhang  (张海宁).

Additional information

Funded by the Guangdong Key R&D Program(2020B0909040001) and the Opening Project of State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Float Glass (2018KF03)

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Tao, B., Pan, X. & Zhang, H. Effect of Outer Carbon Layer Thickness of Carbon-covered N-doped Hollow Carbon Nanospheres on Its Electrocatalytic Performance. J. Wuhan Univ. Technol.-Mat. Sci. Edit. 36, 166–173 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11595-021-2390-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11595-021-2390-1

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