Issue 81, 2015

A copper complex covalently grafted on carbon nanotubes and reduced graphene oxide promotes oxygen reduction reaction activity and catalyst stability

Abstract

Developing new non-precious-metal catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is very important to the final substitution of a platinum-based noble metal catalyst for large-scale commercialization of fuel cells. Herein, we report two new composites CNTs-TAmPyCu and rGO-TAmPyCu as ORR electrocatalysts, where a triazole-pyridine coordinated copper complex TAmPyCu was covalently grafted onto multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO), respectively. Covalent immobilization of a copper complex on CNTs or rGO remarkably improves the catalyst ORR activity and stability compared with that of the physisorbed counterparts. Furthermore, the rGO-TAmPyCu composite significantly enhanced the selectivity of 4e versus 2e reduction of O2 relative to the CNTs-TAmPyCu catalyst, suggesting the beneficial effect of the flat rGO as a supporting material for copper complexes. The ORR activity of the rGO-TAmPyCu catalyst was also compared with a reported multi-nuclear copper assembly. The results from this study suggest that creating more proximal dinuclear Cu sites on a support is an effective approach to promote the oxygen 4e reduction process, and a multinuclear Cu assembly is crucial for efficient O2 reduction with impressively lowered overpotential.

Graphical abstract: A copper complex covalently grafted on carbon nanotubes and reduced graphene oxide promotes oxygen reduction reaction activity and catalyst stability

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
03 Jul 2015
Accepted
29 Jul 2015
First published
29 Jul 2015

RSC Adv., 2015,5, 66487-66493

Author version available

A copper complex covalently grafted on carbon nanotubes and reduced graphene oxide promotes oxygen reduction reaction activity and catalyst stability

R. Wang, T. Yin, P. Wei and J. Liu, RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 66487 DOI: 10.1039/C5RA12972A

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