Catalysts

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Research Advances in Electrocatalysis and Energy-Related Findings across Asia-Pacific

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A special issue of Catalysts (ISSN 2073-4344). This special issue belongs to the section "Electrocatalysis".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 1234

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Lili Zhao

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Guest Editor

Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research (iAIR), University of Jinan, Jinan 250022, China
Interests: electrocatalysis; energy conversion; nanomaterials; electrolyzer; water splitting; piezoelectric materials; photocatalysis; photothermocatalysis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The environmental pollution from fossil fuels and increasing global energy demand have triggered the increasing demand for renewable and clean energy sources. Water splitting by electrolysis to produce clean and sustainable hydrogen has been considered as an ideal approach, which has the ability to meet the future potential needs. As is well known, the high efficiency of the electrolyzer system is dependent on the electrocatalytic materials with high activity. It is noted that the exposing active crystal facet and crystal structure design of electrocatalysts is of vital importance in improving the activity of electrocatalytic electrode materials for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), oxygen evolution reaction (OER) or oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Besides of the noble metal electrocatalysts, non-noble metal electrocatalysts including alloys, transition metal disulfide, transition metal carbides, transition metal phosphates, carbon nanomaterials, metal oxides, metal hydroxides, MOFs, etc., have been extensively explored. The structure–activity relationship between the crystal structure and electrocatalytic performance of electrocatalyst nanomaterials still needs to be further explored.

Dr. Lili Zhao
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Catalysts is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

electrocatalytic HER
electrocatalytic OER
electrocatalytic ORR
electrocatalytic anodizing
energy conversion and storage application
activity
stability

Published Papers (1 paper)

Research

14 pages, 4226 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperEditor’s ChoiceArticle

“Pharaoh’s Snakes” Reaction-Derived Carbon with Favorable Structure and Composition as Metal-Free Oxygen Reduction Reaction Electrocatalyst

by Yuan Li, Xinyao Wang, Hong Wang, Xiaoyao Tan, Dan Liu, Jianzhou Gui, Jian Gao, Zhen Yin, Na Ma and Yun Wang

Catalysts 2023, 13(7), 1059; https://doi.org/10.3390/catal13071059 - 30 Jun 2023

Viewed by 1006

Abstract

Metal-air batteries rely on the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) for their operation. However, the ORR is kinetically slow, necessitating the use of Pt-based catalysts, which is hindered by their high cost and limited availability. Consequently, considerable efforts have been dedicated to developing metal-free catalysts for the ORR. Among these, heteroatom-doped carbons have emerged as promising candidates by manipulating their composition and microstructure. Inspired by the ancient “Pharaoh’s snakes” reaction, this study utilized sugar, melamine, and a polymerizable ionic liquid as precursors to prepare heteroatom-doped carbons with the desired composition and structure. The resulting carbon catalyst exhibited an onset potential and half-wave potential in a 0.1 M KOH electrolyte that was comparable to those of a commercial Pt/C 20 wt.% catalyst, with values of 0.97 and 0.83 V_RHE, respectively. Furthermore, the catalyst demonstrated excellent stability, retaining 93% of its initial current after a 10,800-s test. To evaluate its practical application, the synthesized carbon was employed as the cathode catalyst in a Zn-air battery, which achieved a maximum power density of 90 mW cm⁻². This study, therefore, presents a simple yet effective method for producing metal-free heteroatom-doped carbon ORR catalysts used in various energy conversion and storage devices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research Advances in Electrocatalysis and Energy-Related Findings across Asia-Pacific)

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