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Ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride as a van der Waals’ force initiator activated graphene for engineering efficient non-metal electrocatalysts of Li-CO2 battery

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Abstract

Reasonably regulating electronic coupling to promote charge transfer and exciton separation has been regarded a promising approach in catalysis. The material engineering of van der Waals heterojunction (vdWsH) based on two-dimensional (2D) materials would be a potential way to optimize the as-prepared extrinsic physicochemical characteristics. However, it was still an almost uncultivated land waiting for exploration in catalysis. Herein, we introduced the inert h-boron nitride (h-BN) in non-metal reduced graphene oxide (GN) catalysts and constructed BN-GN vdWsH. The theoretical calculation demonstrated that the h-BN can effectively modify the electronic properties of graphene. With the introduction of h-BN, the BN-GN vdWsH can obviously enhance the catalytic activity of Li-CO2 battery. The existence of BN-GN vdWsH can reduce the overpotential more than 700 mV compared with reduced graphene oxide during the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) and CO2 evolution reaction (CO2ER), and it extended cyclic stability more than three times, which was one of the most outstanding non-metallic catalysts. The reasonable structure design made it work as a high efficient electrocatalyst, which shed light on the development for functional treatment of catalytic materials.

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundations of China (Nos: 21771024 and 21871028)

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  1. Zemin Sun, Di Wang, and Liu Lin contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory of Energy Conversion and Storage Materials Institution, College of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Zemin Sun, Di Wang, Liu Lin, Yuhui Liu, Mengwei Yuan, Caiyun Nan, Huifeng Li, Genban Sun & Xiaojing Yang

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  1. Zemin Sun
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  2. Di Wang
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Correspondence to Genban Sun or Xiaojing Yang.

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Ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride as a van der Waals’ force initiator activated graphene for engineering efficient non-metal electrocatalysts of Li-CO2 battery

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Sun, Z., Wang, D., Lin, L. et al. Ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride as a van der Waals’ force initiator activated graphene for engineering efficient non-metal electrocatalysts of Li-CO2 battery. Nano Res. 15, 1171–1177 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3620-8

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