ABSTRACT
The oxygen evolution reaction is a crucial step in water electrolysis to develop clean and renewable energy. Although noble metal-based catalysts have demonstrated high activity for the oxygen evolution reaction, their application is limited by their high cost and low availability. Here we report the use of a molecule-to-cluster strategy for preparing ultrasmall trimetallic clusters by using the polyoxometalate molecule as a precursor. Ultrafine (0.8 nm) transition-metal clusters with controllable chemical composition are obtained. The transition-metal clusters enable highly efficient oxygen evolution through water electrolysis in alkaline media, manifested by an overpotential of 192 mV at 10 mA cm-2, a low Tafel slope of 36 mV dec-1, and long-term stability for 30 h of electrolysis. We note, however, that besides the excellent performance as an oxygen evolution catalyst, our molecule-to-cluster strategy provides a means to achieve well-defined transition-metal clusters in the subnanometer regime, which potentially can have an impact on several other applications.
ABSTRACT
Highly efficient and stable photoluminescence (PL) are urgently desired for graphene quantum dots (GQDs) to facilitate their prospective applications as optical materials. Here, we report the facile and straightforward synthesis of alkylated graphene quantum dots (AGQDs) via the solvothermal reaction of propagatively alkylated graphene sheets (PAGenes). In contrast to most GQDs reported so far, the synthesized AGQDs process pH-independent and ultra-bright PL with a relative quantum yield of up to 65%. Structural and chemical composition characterization demonstrated that the synthesized AGQDs are nearly oxygen-defect-free with alkyl groups decorated on edges and basal plane, which may contribute to their greatly improved pH tolerance and high quantum efficiency. The photocatalytic performance of AGQDs-P25 nanocomposites was evaluated by the degradation of Rhodamine B under visible light. The photocatalytic rate is ca. 5.9 times higher than that of pure P25, indicating that AGQDs could harness the visible spectrum of sunlight for energy conversion or environmental therapy.
