Boron, nitrogen, and phosphorous ternary doped graphene aerogel with hierarchically porous structures as highly efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction

Abstract

Heteroatom doped porous carbons have shown great potential as metal-free catalysts for electrochemical catalyzed oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Most previous works have been focused on preparation of single and dual heteroatom doped porous carbons for ORR. In this work, we developed a new two-step method for preparation of boron, nitrogen, and phosphorus (B, N, P) ternary doped hierarchically porous graphene aerogels by using boron phosphate as both B and P precursor and ammonia as N dopant. As-produced ternary-doped graphene aerogels exhibited promising ORR performance (mainly 4e⁻ mechanism, J_k: −4.6 mA cm⁻²) in alkaline medium in comparison with commercially available precious metal based Pt/C catalyst. As-prepared B/N/P ternary doped hierarchically porous graphene aerogels can serve as the next generation of metal-free catalysts and alternatives to precious metal catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction and fuel cells.