Abstract
Herein, we present the production of dualatom (B and N)-codoped carbon nano-onions (BN-CNOs) by a standard annealing method. The proposed codoping approach is efficient to introduce both heteroatoms in the graphitic skeleton, as revealed by several characterization techniques, and suitable for a low-cost mass production of Cbased catalysts. The activity of the CNO-based electrocatalysts toward oxygen reduction reaction has been investigated in alkaline media, showing comparable catalytic performance, higher long-term stability (retaining 98.7% of the initial current over 3 h of testing), and excellent immunity toward methanol crossover compared to the standard Pt/Cbased catalysts. Our findings confirm that B/N-codoped CNOs are promising candidates to efficiently catalyze the oxygen reduction in energy devices.
Silvia Giordani
Full Professor Chair of Nanomaterials
My research interests are in the design, synthesis, and characterization of hybrid smart nanomaterials for biomedical, energy and environmental applications