Sulfur-Modified Graphitic Carbon Nitride Nanostructures as an Efficient Electrocatalyst for Water Oxidation

Abstract

There is an urgent need to develop metal-free, low cost, durable, and highly efficient catalysts for industrially important oxygen evolution reactions. Inspired by natural geodes, unique melamine nanogeodes are successfully synthesized using hydrothermal process. Sulfur-modified graphitic carbon nitride (S-modified g-CNx) electrocatalysts are obtained by annealing these melamine nanogeodes in situ with sulfur. The sulfur modification in the g-CNx structure leads to excellent oxygen evolution reaction activity by lowering the overpotential. Compared with the previously reported nonmetallic systems and well-established metallic catalysts, the S-modified g-CNx nanostructures show superior performance, requiring a lower overpotential (290 mV) to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2 and a Tafel slope of 120 mV dec−1 with long-term durability of 91.2% retention for 18 h. These inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and easy-to-synthesize catalysts with extraordinary performance will have a high impact in the field of oxygen evolution reaction electrocatalysis. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim