Chaudhari Nitin Kaduba, Song Min Young, Yu Jong-Sung
Department of Advanced Materials Chemistry, Korea University, 2511 Sejong-ro, Sejong 339-700, Republic of Korea.
Sci Rep. 2014 Jun 9;4:5221. doi: 10.1038/srep05221.
Human urine, otherwise potentially polluting waste, is an universal unused resource in organic form disposed by the human body. We present for the first time "proof of concept" of a convenient, perhaps economically beneficial, and innovative template-free route to synthesize highly porous carbon containing heteroatoms such as N, S, Si, and P from human urine waste as a single precursor for carbon and multiple heteroatoms. High porosity is created through removal of inherently-present salt particles in as-prepared "Urine Carbon" (URC), and multiple heteroatoms are naturally doped into the carbon, making it unnecessary to employ troublesome expensive pore-generating templates as well as extra costly heteroatom-containing organic precursors. Additionally, isolation of rock salts is an extra bonus of present work. The technique is simple, but successful, offering naturally doped conductive hierarchical porous URC, which leads to superior electrocatalytic ORR activity comparable to state of the art Pt/C catalyst along with much improved durability and methanol tolerance, demonstrating that the URC can be a promising alternative to costly Pt-based electrocatalyst for ORR. The ORR activity can be addressed in terms of heteroatom doping, surface properties and electrical conductivity of the carbon framework.
人类尿液，否则可能是污染性废物，是以有机形式存在的一种普遍未被利用的人体排出资源。我们首次展示了一种便捷、可能具有经济效益且创新的无模板路线的“概念验证”，该路线以人类尿液废物作为碳和多种杂原子的单一前驱体，来合成含有氮、硫、硅和磷等杂原子的高度多孔碳。通过去除制备好的“尿液碳”（URC）中固有存在的盐颗粒来产生高孔隙率，并且多种杂原子自然地掺杂到碳中，使得无需使用麻烦且昂贵的造孔模板以及额外昂贵的含杂原子有机前驱体。此外，分离岩盐是本工作的一个额外收获。该技术简单但成功，提供了自然掺杂的导电分级多孔URC，其导致与现有技术的Pt/C催化剂相当的优异电催化氧还原反应（ORR）活性，同时耐久性和甲醇耐受性得到显著改善，表明URC可以成为用于ORR的昂贵铂基电催化剂的有前途的替代品。ORR活性可以从杂原子掺杂、碳骨架的表面性质和电导率方面来阐述。
