High-activity oxygen reduction catalyst based on low-cost bagasse, nitrogen and large specific surface area

Developing low-cost oxygen reduction catalysts to replace expensive Pt-based materials and simultaneously cleaning our environment are still a considerable challenge. In this work, we display a green and turning waste into wealth route to prepare the typical material of nitrogen-doped nanoporous carbon sheets (N-NCS-1000) with a high BET surface area of 1284 m2 g−1 via thermal annealing discarded bagasse under flowing NH3 atmosphere. Further tests indicate that N-NCS-1000 shows not only superior catalytic activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in alkaline media, but also decent catalytic ability in acidic media. Furthermore, it also exhibits excellent stability and methanol tolerance, suggesting a promising metal-free catalyst for ORR. We expect that this facile sustainable and cost-effective synthetic method would provide a worthy inspiration for making use of other discarded wastes to synthesize various functional materials.