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Fabrication of monodispersed B, N co-doped hierarchical porous carbon nanocages through confined etching to boost electrocatalytic oxygen reduction

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Abstract

Dual heteroatom-doped carbons have attracted widespread research attention as catalysts in the field of energy storage and conversion due to their unique electronic structures and chemical tunability. In particular, boron and nitrogen co-doped carbon (B,N@C) has shown great potential for photo/electrocatalytic applications. However, more needs to be done for rational designing and regulating the structure of these materials to improve their catalytic performance. Herein, monodispersed hierarchical porous B,N@C nanocages were fabricated by pyrolyzing zeolite imidazole framework (ZIF) which was treated with ammonia borane or boric acid via an integrated double-solvent impregnation and nanocofined-etching method. The treated ZIF-8 provided an essential structural template to achieve B, N co-doped hierarchical structures with micro/meso/macro multimodal pore size distributions. The resultant B,N@C nanocages displayed high catalytic activities for electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in alkaline media, outperforming most carbon-based catalysts, particularly from the perspective of the half-wave potentials. Such high catalytic performance is due to the enhanced activity by the coexistence of B and N and the mass transfer promoted by the unique hierarchical porous structure.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support under the Australian Research Council’s Future Fellowship (No. FT190100658, Z.H.) and support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Z. H.). X. W. also acknowledges the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Xuefei Wang, Chao Han & Zhenguo Huang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, 116023, China

    Xuefei Wang, Haitao Li, Panpan Su, Na Ta, Yanfu Ma & Jian Liu

  3. DICP-Surrey Joint Centre for Future Materials, University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK

    Jian Liu

Authors
  1. Xuefei Wang
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  2. Chao Han
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  3. Haitao Li
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  4. Panpan Su
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  5. Na Ta
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  6. Yanfu Ma
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  7. Zhenguo Huang
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  8. Jian Liu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhenguo Huang or Jian Liu.

Electronic Supplementary Material

12274_2022_4786_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Fabrication of monodispersed B, N co-doped hierarchical porous carbon nanocages through confined etching to boost electrocatalytic oxygen reduction

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Wang, X., Han, C., Li, H. et al. Fabrication of monodispersed B, N co-doped hierarchical porous carbon nanocages through confined etching to boost electrocatalytic oxygen reduction. Nano Res. 16, 290–298 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4786-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4786-4

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