Hierarchically Structured Graphene-Carbon Nanotube-Co Hybrid Electrocatalyst for Seawater Battery > Publication | UNIST YK RESEARCH

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Publication

Hierarchically Structured Graphene-Carbon Nanotube-Co Hybrid Electrocatalyst for Seawater Battery
Author
Dong Hoon Suh, Sul Ki Park, Puritut Nakhanivej, Youngsik Kim, Soo Min Hwang, Ho Seok Park
Journal
Journal of Power Sources
Vol
372
Page
31-37
Year
2017
The design of cost-effective and highly active catalysts is a critical challenge. Inspired by the strong points of stability and conductivity of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), high catalytic activity of Co nanoparticles, and rapid ion diffusion and large accessible area of three-dimensional (3D) graphene, we demonstrate a novel strategy to construct a hierarchical hybrid structure consisting of Co/CoOx nanoparticles-incorporated CNT branches onto the 3D reduced graphene oxide (rGO) architecture. The surface-modified 3D rGO by steam activation process has a large surface area and abundant defect sites, which serve as active sites to uniformly grow Co/CoOx nanoparticles. Furthermore, the CNTs preserve their performance stably by encapsulating Co nanoparticles, while the uniformly decorated Co/CoOx nanoparticles on the 3D rGP exhibits superior electrocatalytic activity toward oxygen evolution/reduction reaction due to highly exposed active sites. Employing the hybrid particle electrocatalyst, the seawater battery operates stably at 0.01 mA cm-2 during 50 cycles, owing to the good electrocatalytic ability.