Non-noble bimetallic alloy encased in nitrogen-doped nanotubes as a highly active and durable electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

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• 作者：Liming Zeng^a ; ^b ; Xiangzhi Cui^a ; ^{cuixz@mail.sic.ac.cn} ; Lisong Chen^a ; Ting Ye^a ; ^b ; Weimin Huang^a ; Ruguang Ma^a ; Xiaohua Zhang^a ; ^b ; Jianlin Shi^a ; ^{jlshi@mail.sic.ac.cn}
• 刊名：Carbon
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：April 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：114
• 期：Complete
• 页码：347-355
• 全文大小：2757 K
• 卷排序：114

文摘

Exploring highly active, cost-effective and durable oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts as substitutes for the rare platinum-based catalysts is of great significance in energy conversion and storage devices, such as alkaline fuel cells, metal-air batteries, etc. Herein, we fabricated a new type ORR electrocatalyst of NiCo nanocrystal alloy encapsulated in N-doped carbon nanotubes (NCNTs) through a facile, scalable route utilizing nickel acetate and cobalt chloride as metallic Ni and Co precursors, thiourea as a nitrogen and carbon source, respectively, under a Ni/Co atomic ratio of 3:7 at 700 °C. The obtained nanocomposite catalyst NiCo@NCNT-700 exhibited an outstanding ORR activity close to that of the state-of-the-art Pt/C catalyst and superior operational durability under alkaline conditions, which could be attributed to the co-contributions among the uniformly distributed NiCo alloy nanoparticles, graphitic NCNTs and the formation of CoN species. This work provides a new insight for the rational design and development of efficient non-noble metal electrocatalysts by integrating electrochemically active units into the nanocomposite for challenging electrochemical energy-related technologies.