Nanorice-like Structure of Carbon-Doped Hexagonal Boron Nitride as an Efficient Metal-Free Catalyst for Oxygen Electroreduction

Abstract

A rational design of electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) with activity 2–3 times higher than platinum has been of great demand for low temperature fuel cell applications. Particularly, metal-free ORR electrocatalysis has recently been explored rigorously because of limitations such as high price and scarcity of the state-of-the-art platinum catalyst. Here, we present a simple one-step method for the synthesis of carbon-doped hexagonal boron nitride (BNC) by a chemical vapor deposition method. An inert and insulating h-BN has been made active by carbon doping. From the structural analysis using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), we confirmed the formation of novel BNC nanostructures. BNC nanostructures exhibit rice grain-like shape having length ∼ 50 nm with interlayer distance of 0.34 nm, indicating hexagonal stacking of BN layers. As-synthesized BNC nanostructures obtained after annealing at 850 °C (BNC2-850) show interesting catalytic activity toward ORR with onset potential of 0.83 V versus RHE and a current density of 4.6 mA/cm2 in alkaline condition. More interestingly, the BNC2-850 nanostructures also reveal better stability even up to 10,000 potential cycles with concomitant negligible poisoning effect during methanol crossover process. Such a systematic and controlled study of carbon doping in h-BN nanostructures could certainly support the promising candidature of BNC as a metal-free electrocatalyst toward ORR.

FeCo alloy/N, S dual-doped carbon composite as a high-performance bifunctional catalyst in an advanced rechargeable zinc-air battery

“…To realize low-cost bifunctional catalysts that can catalyze both the ORR and OER, an effective strategy is to assemble transition metal-based OER catalysts with heteroatom-doped carbon-based ORR catalysts [19][20][21]. For the carbon-based ORR catalysts, dualdoping (including N, S dual-doping; N, P dual-doping; and N, B dual-doping) can further improve the catalytic performance compared to only nitrogen doping [22][23][24]. For non-noble metalbased (e.g.…”

Study on the Simple Surface Treatments of N, P Dual‐doped Carbon as Metal‐free Catalyst for Metal‐air Batteries

“…The peaks at 190.5 eV and 192.0 eV are corresponding to the BÀ N and BÀ O bond, respectively. [10,25,43,44] It can be seen that the peak of BÀ N bond is dominated no matter in PNCÀ B or PNCÀ E/B. This indicates that the generated borides after NaBH 4 treatment are linked to the N atoms at the edges of carbon matrix.…”

“…The high‐resolution XPS spectra of B 1s (Figure 3b) were fitted by two peaks. The peaks at 190.5 eV and 192.0 eV are corresponding to the B−N and B−O bond, respectively [10,25,43,44] . It can be seen that the peak of B−N bond is dominated no matter in PNC−B or PNC−E/B.…”

The recent advancement of low-dimensional nanostructured materials for drug delivery and drug sensing application: A brief review

“…Besides, the BNNS can be synthesized with the large surface using numerous methods including the popular CVD methods for a large scale production [ [291] , [292] , [293] ]. These alluring properties and sufficiently available synthesis methods made BNNS to be applied as a catalyst [ 294 , 295 ], dielectric material [ 296 , 297 ], high temperature application [ 298 ], UV photodetector [ 299 ], energy storage device [ 300 ], sensor [ [301] , [302] , [303] , [304] ] etc. Finally, the biocompatibility of BNNS [ 305 ] leads them to the biomedical applications like drug sensors and drug delivery which will be reviewed in this section of our study.…”