Synergistic Assembly of Dendrimer-Templated Platinum Catalysts on Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Nanotube Electrodes for Oxygen Reduction

Abstract

A study of the synergistic tuning of nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (NCNTs) as support- and size-monodisperse platinum nanoparticles templated from G4-NH2 dendrimers (Pt-DEN's) as catalysts targeted toward oxygen reduction is reported. UV-vis spectroscopy, adsorption isotherms, TGA, TEM, and voltammetry were used to characterize the loading and activity of Pt-DENs immobilized on CNT and NCNT supports. The facile uptake of Pt-DENs was found to be influenced by the number of edge plane sites on the NCNT support with higher adsorption rates observed for NCNTs with increased nitrogen content. Pt-DEN/NCNT composites exhibit high activity with a mass-transport-limited current density and mass activity of 2.3 mA cm(-2) and 0.05 mA g(-1), respectively, for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR).

Present Advancement in Production of Carbon Nanotubes and Their Derivatives from Industrial Waste with Promising Applications

“…Furthermore, regarding to a common issue on using specific reactor system which would be promising for scalable production, some typical reports available in the public domain could be summarized in Table 2. It should be noted that various types of raw materials existing in gas, liquid and solid phases could be utilized for CNT synthesis with the assistance of various kinds of catalysts, such as ferrocene, nickel, cobalt and iron (Afre et al, 2006;Liu et al, 2006;Vijayaraghavan and Stevenson, 2007;Charinpanitkul et al, 2009b;Zhuo et al, 2010;Sano et al, 2012;Li et al, 2012;Yang et al, 2012;Morales et al, 2013). Those information would be good evidences that utilizing chemical vapor deposition or catalytic pyrolysis is a promising method because of its advantages on practical scalability and handling (Colomer et al, 2000;Grobert, 2007;Bazaegan and McKay, 2012;Mishra et al, 2012).…”

“…Consequently it has driven increasing attentions of research and development teams in various countries to propose and investigate novel methodologies to utilize such industrial waste. Instead of using as alternative energy sources to reduce environmental problems from such industrial waste, their usage for production of carbonaceous nanomaterials has been examined via various routes, such as catalytic pyrolysis, hydrothermal treatment and so on (Afre et al, 2006;Liu et al, 2006;Vijayaraghavan and Stevenson, 2007;Zhang et al, 2008;Charinpanitkul et al, 2009a;Zhuo et al, 2010;Alves et al, 2011;Li et al, 2012;Mishra et al, 2012;Sano et al, 2012;Yang et al, 2012;Bajad et al, 2015).…”

“…Among various synthesizing methodologies, as compared in Table 1 chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or thermal pyrolysis is recognized as an efficient mean because of its advantages in large-scale production with relatively low operating costs and excellent controllability in orientation, alignment, length, diameter, purity and density of resultant CNTs. Many technical reports have indicated that the thermal pyrolysis of organometallic compounds, such as ferrocene, iron phthalocyanine, and nickel phthalocyanine can be employed as either reactants or catalysts for production of carbon nanotubes and nanocapsules (Afre et al, 2006;Liu et al, 2006;Vijayaraghavan and Stevenson, 2007;Charinpanitkul et al, 2009a;Zhuo et al, 2010;Sano et al, 2012;Li et al, 2012;Yang et al, 2012). With the thermal pyrolysis, some metal species, such as Fe, Ni or Co, in those compounds are well recognized to play an important role as catalyst for CNP growth (Auer et al, 1998;Li et al, 2003;Zeng, et al, 2006;Yuan et al, 2007;Morales et al, 2013;Nahil et al, 2015).…”

“…Meanwhile, it has been well accepted that utilization of alternative carbon sources available in gas, liquid, or solid phase by introducing over catalytic substrates or pre-mixing with catalyst supply would possibly increase production yield, improve CNT quality, or minimize the amount of expensive catalyst usage Vijayaraghavan and Stevenson, 2007;Yuan et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2008;Quan et al, 2010;Zhuo et al, 2010;Alves et al, 2011;Sano et al, 2012;Li et al, 2012;Mishra et al, 2012;Yang et al, 2012;Sawant et al, 2013;Bajad et al, 2015). High purity carbon sources (> 99.9 %), such as CO, CO 2 , alcohols, and various hydrocarbons (methane, ethylene, acetylene, n-butane, hexane, benzene, toluene, xylene) have been extensively utilized for synthesizing CNTs with specific know-how relevant to synthesizing and purifying parameters which are synthesizing temperature and pressure, residence time in reactors, ratio of carbon source to catalyst and so on.…”

“…plastics wastes), food wastes, and low value-added industrial by-products (red oil, glycerol, slop oil). Instead of using as alternative energy sources, such industrial wastes or by-products could be considered as one of good alternatives for production of carbonaceous nanomaterials Vijayaraghavan and Stevenson, 2007;Yuan et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2008;Quan et al, 2010;Zhuo et al, 2010;Alves et al, 2011;Li et al, 2012;Yang et al, 2012;Altalhi et al, 2013;Acomb et al, 2014;Gong et al, 2014;Bajad et al, 2015). Table 2 summarizes some previous works which have made use of industrial waste as raw material for production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and derivatives.…”