Published in

Royal Society of Chemistry, Green Chemistry, 9(18), p. 2819-2826, 2016

DOI: 10.1039/c5gc03106k

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Deep eutectic solvent promoted one step sustainable conversion of fresh seaweed biomass to functionalized graphene as a potential electrocatalyst

This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

Full text: Unavailable

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Orange circle
Postprint: archiving restricted
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Herein we report a facile method for the scalable production of Fe3O4/Fe doped graphene nanosheets (Fe3O4/Fe-GN) from a naturally abundant seaweed resource. The granules that remained after the recovery of liquid juice from a fresh brown seaweed, Sargassum tenerrimum, were utilized as a raw material and a deep eutectic solvent (DES) generated by the complexation of choline chloride and FeCl3 (ChoCl-FeCl3) was employed as a template as well as a catalyst for the production of graphene nanosheets. Pyrolysis of a mixture of seaweed granules and DES at 700-900 �C under a 95% N2 and 5% H2 atmosphere resulted in the formation of Fe3O4/Fe-GN with a high surface area (220 m2 g-1) and high electrical conductivity (2384.6 mS m-1). The synthesized nanosheets were then tested for their electrocatalytic activity in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in an alkaline fuel cell. The electrocatalyst demonstrated a positive onset potential, high cathodic current density, low hydrogen peroxide formation (80% activity of the catalyst, making the functionalized graphene sheets derived from Sargassum tenerrimum a sustainable replacement for existing precious metal-based ORR catalysts. Copyright 2016 The Royal Society of Chemistry.