Issue 11, 2017

A general polymer-assisted strategy enables unexpected efficient metal-free oxygen-evolution catalysis on pure carbon nanotubes

Abstract

A conceptually new and general strategy was, for the first time, proposed to significantly boost the electrocatalytic activity of metal-free pure carbon nanotubes (CNTs) towards the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) by simple polymer wrapping without introducing any heteroatom dopants, functional groups, or edge defects into the graphitic structure. Our strategy is straightforward, efficient, green, and easy to be scaled up. After wrapping pure CNTs with a certain class of electrochemically inert polymers (i.e. poly(ethylene-alt-maleic acid), poly(vinyl alcohol), poly(vinyl acetate), poly(ethylene glycol)) with polar oxygen-containing groups (i.e. –COOH, –OH, –COOCH3, –O–) through noncovalent interactions, a series of advanced metal-free composite membrane catalysts were easily achieved, which yielded unexpected, surprisingly high OER activity – on par with the commercial noble RuO2 catalyst, though pure CNTs have rather poor OER activity. Combined experimental and computational studies revealed that the observed superb OER activity could be attributed to a synergistic effect of intrinsic topological defects in the CNTs as active centers and the coated polymer layer as a co-catalyst to optimize the adsorption energies of intermediates for improving the OER energetics.

Graphical abstract: A general polymer-assisted strategy enables unexpected efficient metal-free oxygen-evolution catalysis on pure carbon nanotubes

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
19 Jun 2017
Accepted
22 Aug 2017
First published
22 Aug 2017

Energy Environ. Sci., 2017,10, 2312-2317

A general polymer-assisted strategy enables unexpected efficient metal-free oxygen-evolution catalysis on pure carbon nanotubes

Y. Zhang, X. Fan, J. Jian, D. Yu, Z. Zhang and L. Dai, Energy Environ. Sci., 2017, 10, 2312 DOI: 10.1039/C7EE01702B

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements