Combination of carbon nitride and carbon nanotubes: synergistic catalysts for energy conversion.
Due to their versatile features and environmental friendliness, functionalized carbon materials show great potential in practical applications, especially in energy conversion. Developing carbon composites with properties that can be modulated by simply changing the ratio of the original materials is an intriguing synthetic strategy. Here, we took cyanamide and multiwalled carbon nanotubes as precursors and introduced a facile method to fabricate a series of graphitic carbon nitride/carbon nanotubes (g-C3 N4 /CNTs) composites. These composites demonstrated different practical applications with different weight ratios of the components, that is, they showed synergistic effects in optoelectronic conversion when g-C3 N4 was the main ingredient and in oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) when CNTs dominated the composites. Our experiments indicated that the high electrical conductivity of carbon nanotubes promoted the transmission of the charges in both cases.
Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310028 (China).
Yutong
Y
Gong
Jing
J
Wang
Zhongzhe
Z
Wei
Pengfei
P
Zhang
Haoran
H
Li
Yong
Y
Wang
D002384:Catalysis; D004735:Energy Transfer; D053761:Nanocomposites / Q000737:chemistry; D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D009570:Nitriles / Q000737:chemistry*; D010100:Oxygen / Q000737:chemistry
D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon; D009570:Nitriles; C011206:cyanogen; D010100:Oxygen
carbon nanotubes; carbon nitride; carbonaceous composite; optoelectronic conversion; oxygen reduction reaction