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Effect of carrier gas on nitrogen-doped graphene in AC rotating arc plasma

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Abstract

Nitrogen do** is an effective way to improve the electrical and catalytic properties of graphene. Here, we used a non-thermal plasma technique with AC rotating arc to prepare nitrogen-doped graphene. This method does not need catalyst and can produce nitrogen-doped graphene in the atmospheric environment by large scale. CH4 as the carbon source and N2 as the nitrogen source, nitrogen-doped graphene was obtained by plasma direct synthesis. The nitrogen content in the product was analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and the do** level was about 1.19 at.%. It was found that H2 and CO2 as carrier gases can change the nitrogen do** type and content. When there was only N2, pyrrolic N and graphitic N were the main forms in the graphene. The addition of H2 improved the selectivity of pyridinic N and pyrrolic N, but decreased the nitrogen do** content. CO2 significantly increased the selectivity of pyrrolic N and increased the nitrogen do** content. In addition, the formation mechanism of nitrogen-doped graphene was briefly described in this paper. The key in this plasma production technology is to understand the effect of carrier gas on nitrogen do**, which is also instructive for mass production in industry.

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All data used in this study are available upon request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, No. 22278080), Minjiang Scholarship of Fujian Province (No. Min-Gaojiao [2010]-117), Central-government Guided Fund for Local Economic Development (No. 830170778), R&D Fund for Strategic Emerging Industry of Fujian Province (No. 82918001), International Cooperation Project of Fujian Science and Technology Department (No. 830170771), Open Fund of Fujian Key Laboratory of New Energy Generation and Power Conversion (No. KLIF-202102), 111 Project (No. D17005) and Analytical Testing Fund of Qingyuan Innovation Laboratory of Fujian Province.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemical Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, 350108, People’s Republic of China

    Rui Zhong, Feng Zheng, **long Zhang & Ruoyu Hong

  2. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England

    Xuesong Lu

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Contributions

RZ: Writing—original draft, Data curation, Conceptualization, Methodology. FZ: Formal analysis, Investigation. Validation, software. JZ: Investigation, Visualization. XL & RH: Writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Ruoyu Hong.

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Zhong, R., Lu, X., Zheng, F. et al. Effect of carrier gas on nitrogen-doped graphene in AC rotating arc plasma. J Mater Sci 58, 8742–8756 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08585-2

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