Recently, Prof. Jianli Mi’s group published a research on “Effect of Zn on Size Control and Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity of Co Nanoparticles Supported on N-doped Carbon Nanotubes” in Chemistry of Materials (Chem. Mater. 2019, 31, 8864-8874).

N-doped carbon supported transition metals nanoparticles have received extensive attention as promising catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The size of decorated nanoparticles is of great importance to the electrocatalytic activity, however, it is yet difficult to control the particle size during the synthesis by pyrolysis of the precursors at high temperatures. In this work, Co nanoparticles decorated N-doped CNTs were in-situ grown via direct pyrolysis of metal salts and melamine. The control of the Co particle size as well as the CNTs size was achieved by tuning of the Zn amount in the precursor. It was revealed that the presence of Zn during the synthesis significantly improves the ORR activity due to the depressed Co particles and increased electrochemical active surface area. The formation process of the catalyst was also studied by carefully probing the structures of the intermediate products.

URL: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.chemmater.9b02893