Facile green synthesis of nitrogen-doped porous carbon and its use for electrocatalysis towards nitrobenzene and hydrazine

• A one step, low-cost, green method to prepare nitrogen-doped porous carbon (NPC).
• Combining the advantages of nano-CaCO3 template and polydopamine C/N precursor.
• Improved electrocatalytic activity towards NB and N2H4 on NPC modified electrode.
• NPC-2 showing low detection limit, good anti-interference and reproducibility.

By using eco-friendly polydopamine as carbon and nitrogen precursor and commercial hydrophilic nano-CaCO3 as hard-template; a one step, cost-effective and green method to synthesize nitrogen-doped porous carbon (NPC) is presented. A series of NPC samples with different nitrogen contents have been reported. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectra (EDX), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (IR), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen adsorption-desorption and X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) were employed for characterizations of NPC. The influence of BET surface area and different amounts of N-bonding configurations of NPC for the electrocatalysis towards nitrobenzene (NB) and hydrazine (N2H4) were investigated in detail. Results indicated that NPC with largest BET surface area and highest amounts of pyrrolic N and graphitic N showed improved electrocatalytic activity for NB and N2H4 in neutral solution.

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