Solvent engineering of oxygen-enriched carbon dots for efficient electrochemical hydrogen peroxide production

• Main Authors: Shen, Xiaoyu, Wang, Zeming, Guo, Huazhang, Lei, Zhendong, Liu, Zheng, Wang, Liang
• Other Authors: School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Materials; Electrochemical Generations; Flow Cells
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171209
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The development of cost-effective and reliable metal-free carbon-based electrocatalysts has gained significant attention for electrochemical hydrogen peroxide (H2 O2 ) generation through a two-electron oxygen reduction reaction. In this study, a scalable solvent engineering strategy is employed to fabricate oxygen-doped carbon dots (O-CDs) that exhibit excellent performance as electrocatalysts. By adjusting the ratio of ethanol and acetone solvents during the synthesis, the surface electronic structure of the resulting O-CDs can be systematically tuned. The amount of edge active CO group was strongly correlated with the selectivity and activity of the O-CDs. The optimum O-CDs-3 exhibited extraordinary H2 O2 selectivity of up to 96.55% (n = 2.06) at 0.65 V (vs RHE) and achieved a remarkably low Tafel plot of 64.8 mV dec-1 . Furthermore, the realistic H2 O2 productivity yield of flow cell is measured to be as high as 111.18 mg h-1 cm-2 for a duration of 10 h. The findings highlight the potential of universal solvent engineering approach for enabling the development of carbon-based electrocatalytic materials with improved performance. Further studies will be undertaken to explore the practical implications of the findings for advancing the field of carbon-based electrocatalysis.