Shuo Dou

Simultaneous etching and doping of cobalt sulfides–graphene hybrid with NH₃-plasma effectively enhances the oxygen electrocatalytic activity.

catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in fuel cells or metal-air batteries. These electrocatalysts are usually deposited on a 3D conductive support (e.g., carbon paper or carbon cloth (CC)) to facilitate mass and electron transport. For practical applications, it is desirable to create in situ catalysts on the carbon fiber support to simplify the fabrication process for catalytic electrodes. In this study, the first example of in situ exfoliated, edge-rich, oxygen-functionalized graphene on the surface of carbon fibers using Ar plasma treatment is successfully prepared. Compared to pristine CC, the plasma-etched carbon cloth (P-CC) has a higher specific surface area and an increased number of active sites for OER and ORR. P-CC also displays good intrinsic electron conductivity and excellent mass transport. Theoretical studies show that P-CC has a low overpotential that is comparable to Pt-based catalysts, as a result of both defects and oxygen doping. This study provides a simple and effective approach for producing highly active in situ catalysts on a carbon support for OER and ORR.

Renewable energy technology has been considered as a "MUST" option to lower the use of fossil fuels for industry and daily life. Designing critical and sophisticated materials is of great importance in order to realize high-performance energy technology. Typically, efficient synthesis and soft surface modification of nanomaterials are important for energy technology. Therefore, there are increasing demands on the rational design of efficient electrocatalysts or electrode materials, which are the key for scalable and practical electrochemical energy devices. Nevertheless, the development of versatile and cheap strategies is one of the main challenges to achieve the aforementioned goals. Accordingly, plasma technology has recently appeared as an extremely promising alternative for the synthesis and surface modification of nanomaterials for electrochemical devices. Here, the recent progress on the development of nonthermal plasma technology is highlighted for the synthesis and surface modification of advanced electrode materials for renewable energy technology including electrocatalysts for fuel cells, water splitting, metal-air batteries, and electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors, etc.

For the first time, we developed edge-rich and dopant-free graphene as a highly efficient ORR electrocatalyst. Electrochemical analysis revealed that the as-obtained edge-rich graphene showed excellent ORR activity through a one-step and four-electron pathway. With a similar strategy, edge-rich carbon nanotubes and graphite can also be obtained with enhanced ORR activity. This work confirms the important role of edge carbon in efficient ORR electrocatalysis without interruption by any other dopants.