Substitutionally-doped graphitic materials have recently been shown to be very promising catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and in electrochemical energy storage applications. Herein, we report the direct one-step synthesis of bulk phosphorous-doped graphitic carbon from cheap, commercially available liquid precursors. This simple approach can be extended to the synthesis of binary-doped (i.e., B,P-doped or N,P-doped) and even ternary-doped (B,N,P-doped) bulk graphitic materials. Sample morphology was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) while the composition was determined using energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis and scanning Auger electron nanoprobe techniques. The polycrystalline structure of these widely chemically tunable materials was investigated by powder X-ray diffraction, demonstrating a disordered, turbostratic character typical of low-temperature graphites. Post-synthetic high-sheer batch mixing yielded single layer graphenes which were analyzed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) techniques to elucidate the relationship between stacking (interlayer) disorder and lattice (intralayer) disorder within the graphitic sheets of the original bulk samples.

Direct synthesis of bulk phosphorous-doped graphitic carbon

254th National Meeting (2017)

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