We report the first investigation into a quaternary-doped graphene catalyst material for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) under alkaline conditions. The material was synthesized via direct pyrolysis of graphene oxide (GO) with boron, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur precursors. The resulting BNPS-Gr catalyst was thoroughly characterized and its composition found via XPS to be 6.4% (B), 6.1% (N), 2.6% (P) and 0.5% (S), while HR-TEM imaging shows a few-layered graphene structure. Electrochemical investigations into the catalytic activity towards the ORR show improved performance of the quaternary-doped graphene with the effective number of electrons transferred being ca. 3.7, compared to single-doped graphenes (2.9–3.2) and significantly lower peroxide production. This demonstrates BNPS-Gr to be a promising alternative to current Pt-group catalysts for the ORR, especially in methanol-fuelled fuel cells, where the presence of methanol in the cathode side from the fuel crossover is shown not to affect the performance of the quaternary-doped graphene catalyst.

我们报告了对碱性条件下的氧还原反应（ORR）的季掺杂石墨烯催化剂材料的首次研究。该材料是通过将氧化石墨烯（GO）与硼，氮，磷和硫的前体直接热解合成的。对生成的BNPS-Gr催化剂进行了彻底表征，通过XPS测得其组成为6.4％（B），6.1％（N），2.6％（P）和0.5％（S），而HR-TEM成像显示：层状石墨烯结构。电化学研究对ORR的催化活性表明，四元掺杂石墨烯的性能得到了改善，有效转移的电子数约为1。与单掺杂石墨烯（2.9-3.2）相比，该数值为3.7，且过氧化物的产量显着降低。