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

作者：Wang, Ru-Chun; Yin, Tian-Liang; Wei, Ping-Jie; Liu, Jin-Gang^*

来源：RSC Advances, 2015, 5(81): 66487-66493.

DOI：10.1039/c5ra12972a

• FUEL-CELLS
• COORDINATION CHEMISTRY
• CU COMPLEXES
• ELECTROCATALYSTS
• SURFACE
• PLATINUM
• O-2
• 3,5-DIAMINO-1,2,4-TRIAZOLE
• PERFORMANCE
• LIGANDS

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 O-2 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 multinuclear 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 O-2 reduction with impressively lowered overpotential.

• 出版日期2015
• 单位华东理工大学