Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Arrays Co doped with Phosphorus and Nitrogen as Efficient Metal Free Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Reduction.
Using a mixture of ferrocene, pyridine, and triphenylphosphine as precursors for injection assisted chemical vapor deposition (CVD) we prepared the first vertically aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube array co doped with phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) with a relatively high P doping level (designated as PN ACNT) We have also demonstrated the potential applications of the resultant PN ACNTs as high performance electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) PN ACNT arrays were shown to exhibit a high ORR electrocatalytic activity, superb long term durability, and good tolerance to methanol and carbon monoxide, significantly outperforming their counterparts doped with P (P ACNT) or N (N ACNT) only and even comparable to the commercially available Pt C catalyst (45 wt Pt on Vulcan XC 72R; E TEK) due to a demonstrated synergetic effect arising from the co doping of CNTs with both P and N.
The journal of physical chemistry letters