Cobalt-incorporated, nitrogen-doped carbon nanofibers as effective non-precious catalyst for methanol electrooxidation in alkaline medium

• The study introduces Co-mainly-based material as MOR electrocatalyst.
• Nitrogen doping showed distinct positive influence on the electrocatalytic activity.
• The introduced CNFs can be effectively used as electrocatalyst in methanol oxidation.
• The introduced CNFs reveal good stability with high current densities.

Among the nanosupports, carbon nanofibers distinctly enhance the performance of the functional electrocatalysts because the adsorption capacity and low resistance electron transfer due to the large axial ratio. Moreover, nitrogen doping shows positive influence toward electrooxidation ability. In this study, Co-incorporated and nitrogen-doped carbon nanofibers are introduced as effective non-precious electrocatalyst for methanol oxidation in the alkaline medium. The introduced NFs have been prepared using facile, simple, high yield, low cost, and effective technique; electrospinning. Typically, calcination of cobalt acetate/urea/poly(vinyl alcohol) electrospun mats at 850 °C in argon atmosphere leads to produce the introduced nanofibers. The structure, composition and morphology were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, EDX, FE-SEM and TEM techniques. The electrocatalytic activity of the introduced nanofibers toward methanol oxidation was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV). Study the influence of the nitrogen content could be investigated by adjusting the urea content in the original electrospun nanofiber mats. The results indicated that the activity of the catalyst increases with increasing urea content in the electrospun solution up to 4%. A maximum current density was 100.84 mA cm−2 for Co/N(4%)-CNFs that was higher than the undoped ones (63.56 mA cm−2). Moreover, good chemical stability was observed due to covering the metals NPs by carbon shells. Overall, nitrogen doping enhances electrocatalytic activity of Co/CNFs toward methanol oxidation in alkaline media.

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