title: Enhanced electrocatalytic activity of nitrogen-doped olympicene/graphene hybrids for the oxygen reduction reaction.
abstract: Developing inexpensive and non-precious metal electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is among the major goals in fuel cells. Herein, by using density-functional theory calculations, we show that N-doped olympicene/graphene hybrids exhibit unexpectedly high ORR catalytic activity-even comparable to that of the Pt(111) surface. Both graphitic-type and pyridine-type N-doped olympicene/graphene hybrids are highly active for the ORR and have good CO tolerance. The formation of the second H2O molecule is the rate-determining step for the ORR with the graphitic-type hybrid, whereas on the pyridine-type hybrid, it is the formation of OOH. Note that N-doped olympicene/graphene hybrid materials combine the high reactivity of olympicene and the high electrical conductivity of graphene, which allows them to be potentially used as low-cost and non-precious-metal ORR catalysts.
authors: Institute for Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China. zhangpjlxb@ujs.edu.cn.
authors: Xiuli
authors: X
authors: Hou
authors: Institute for Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China. zhangpjlxb@ujs.edu.cn.
authors: Peng
authors: P
authors: Zhang
authors: Nano Structural Materials Center, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. weiliu@njust.edu.cn.
authors: Shuang
authors: S
authors: Li
authors: Nano Structural Materials Center, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. weiliu@njust.edu.cn.
authors: Wei
authors: W
authors: Liu