Browsing by Subject "CATALYST"

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    Highly efficient oxygen reduction electrocatalysts based on winged carbon nanotubes.
    (Scientific reports, 2013-11) Cheng, Yingwen; Zhang, Hongbo; Varanasi, Chakrapani V; Liu, Jie
    Developing electrocatalysts with both high selectivity and efficiency for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is critical for several applications including fuel cells and metal-air batteries. In this work we developed high performance electrocatalysts based on unique winged carbon nanotubes. We found that the outer-walls of a special type of carbon nanotubes/nanofibers, when selectively oxidized, unzipped and exfoliated, form graphene wings strongly attached to the inner tubes. After doping with nitrogen, the winged nanotubes exhibited outstanding activity toward catalyzing the ORR through the four-electron pathway with excellent stability and methanol/carbon monoxide tolerance. While the doped graphene wings with high active site density bring remarkable catalytic activity, the inner tubes remain intact and conductive to facilitate electron transport during electrocatalysis.
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    Importance of diameter control on selective synthesis of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes.
    (ACS nano, 2014-08-11) Li, Jinghua; Ke, Chung-Ting; Liu, Kaihui; Li, Pan; Liang, Sihang; Finkelstein, Gleb; Wang, Feng; Liu, Jie
    The coexistence of semiconducting and metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) during synthesis is one of the major bottlenecks that prevent their broad application for the next-generation nanoelectronics. Herein, we present more understanding and demonstration of the growth of highly enriched semiconducting SWNTs (s-SWNTs) with a narrow diameter distribution. An important fact discovered in our experiments is that the selective elimination of metallic SWNTs (m-SWNTs) from the mixed arrays grown on quartz is diameter-dependent. Our method emphasizes controlling the diameter distribution of SWNTs in a narrow range where m-SWNTs can be effectively and selectively etched during growth. In order to achieve narrow diameter distribution, uniform and stable Fe-W nanoclusters were used as the catalyst precursors. About 90% of as-prepared SWNTs fall into the diameter range 2.0-3.2 nm. Electrical measurement results on individual SWNTs confirm that the selectivity of s-SWNTs is ∼95%. The present study provides an effective strategy for increasing the purity of s-SWNTs via controlling the diameter distribution of SWNTs and adjusting the etchant concentration. Furthermore, by carefully comparing the chirality distributions of Fe-W-catalyzed and Fe-catalyzed SWNTs under different water vapor concentrations, the relationship between the diameter-dependent and electronic-type-dependent etching mechanisms was investigated.