The dataset of Japanese patents and patents' holding firms in green vehicle powertrains field.

In 2020, the Government of Japan declared "2050 carbon neutral" and launched a long-term strategy to create a "virtuous cycle of economy and environment". Japanese firms possess many technologies that contribute to decarbonization, which is important to expand investment for Green Technology (environmental technology) development. As automobiles are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions [1], the technological shift towards vehicle powertrain systems is an attempt to lower problems like emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides [2]. On the other hand, patent data are the most reliable business performance for applied research and development activities when investigating the knowledge domains or the technology evolution (Wand, 1997). Our paper describes a Japanese patents dataset of the vehicle powertrain systems for hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), battery electric vehicle (BEV) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). In this paper we create a method of bombinating international patent classification (IPC) and keywords to define "green" patents in vehicle powertrains field, using patent data which were applied to Japan Patent Office recorded on EPO's PATSTAT database during 2010∼2019 year. When analyze patents, it is necessary to consider the social situation of each country including language background, we collect patents description documents (abstracts and titles) not only written in English but also in Japanese. Finally, we build a database includes 6025 green patents' description documents and 266 patents' holding firms. With which we then identify 3756 HEV patents, 1716 BEV patents, and 553 FCEV patents. Data about patent holding firms is also appended. The full dataset may be useful to researchers who would like to do further search like natural language processing and machine learning on patent description documents, statistical data analysis for empirical economics.

Effects of halogen doping on nanocarbon catalysts synthesized by a solution plasma process for the oxygen reduction reaction.

Halogen-doped carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) were synthesized by a simple one-step solution plasma process at room temperature using a mixture of benzene (C6H6) and organics containing halogen atoms as the precursors (i.e., hexafluorobenzene (C6F6), hexachlorobenzene (C6Cl6), and hexabromobenzene (C6Br6)). The experimental results demonstrated that halogen doping, especially F and Cl, could lead to more efficient removal of residual hydrogen compared to carbon synthesized with pure benzene. This phenomenon was related to the different binding energies between hydrogen and halogens to form hydrogen halides. Their crystallinity and morphology did not change and remained the same as non-doped carbon. The electrochemical evaluation of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity in an alkaline solution revealed that halogen doping did not play a significant role in shifting the onset potential for the ORR, while a slight enhancement in diffusion limited current density was observed at high overpotentials. Moreover, the electron transfer number involved in the ORR process determined from the Koutecky-Levich plot at -0.6 V was found to increase for halogen-doped carbons in the following order: F-CNPs > Br-CNPs > Cl-CNPs > CNPs. The improved ORR performance of F-CNPs could reasonably be attributed to the synergistic effects of specific bonding states between the halogen and carbon, structural defects and surface functional groups. Our results confirmed the validity of using halogen doping to improve the ORR catalytic activity of CNPs.