Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, United States.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2015 Jan 28;7(3):1978-86. doi: 10.1021/am507787t. Epub 2015 Jan 16.
The use of renewable resources to make various synthetic materials is increasing in order to meet some of our sustainability challenges. Yeast is one of the most common household ingredients, which is cheap and easy to reproduce. Herein we report that yeast cells can be thermally transformed into hollow, core-shell heteroatom-doped carbon microparticles that can effectively electrocatalyze the oxygen reduction and hydrazine oxidation reactions, reactions that are highly pertinent to fuel cells or renewable energy applications. We also show that yeast cell walls, which can easily be separated from the cells, can produce carbon materials with electrocatalytic activity for both reactions, albeit with lower activity compared with the ones obtained from intact yeast cells. The results reveal that the intracellular components of the yeast cells such as proteins, phospholipids, DNAs and RNAs are indirectly responsible for the latter's higher electrocatalytic activity, by providing it with more heteroatom dopants. The synthetic method we report here can serve as a general route for the synthesis of (electro)catalysts using microorganisms as raw materials.
为了应对一些可持续性挑战，人们越来越多地利用可再生资源来制造各种合成材料。酵母是最常见的家用成分之一，价格便宜且易于繁殖。在此，我们报告称，酵母细胞可以通过热转化为空心、核壳型杂原子掺杂碳微球，这些微球可以有效地电催化氧还原和肼氧化反应，这些反应与燃料电池或可再生能源应用密切相关。我们还表明，酵母细胞壁可以很容易地与细胞分离，从而产生对这两种反应都具有电催化活性的碳材料，尽管与完整酵母细胞获得的材料相比，其活性较低。研究结果表明，酵母细胞的细胞内成分，如蛋白质、磷脂、DNA 和 RNA，通过为其提供更多的杂原子掺杂剂，间接地使其具有更高的电催化活性。我们在这里报道的合成方法可以作为一种使用微生物作为原料合成（电）催化剂的通用途径。
