Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) plays a vital rule in several processes and applications including energy applications and gas sensors which have been widely studied. Cathode catalysts for ORR present a major challenge for the practical applications. An ideal cathode catalyst should be scalable, durable, and cost-effective. Developing highly active non-noble metal ORR catalysts is crucial for a variety of renewable energy applications including fuel cells and metal-air batteries. Heteroatom doped carbon nano-materials,  known as metal-free catalysts, show potential applications for ORR and maybe promising replacement of the current rare metal catalysts. Recently, we have found a facile method for preparing partially nitrogen functionalized graphene oxide sheets. To achieve better nitrogen functionalization, graphene oxide was annealed in ammonia solution for 12 h. The electrochemical measurement data show that the nitrogen functionalized carbon nanomaterials synthesized in ammonia environment possess good electro-catalytic activities for ORR. In this work, we also identified a physical approach to drive the randomly oriented graphene nano-sheets to be aligned parallel to the surface of electrode, which show much improved electrocatalytic performance with an excellent stability in alkaline electrolytes.   The reported new method using inexpensive physical approach has the potential to achieve a low cost and mass production capability for preparations of new electrocatalyst electrodes.

Physical approach for enhancing the electrocatalytic properties of nitrogen functionalized graphene nanosheets

255th National Meeting (2018)

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