Issue 43, 2017, Issue in Progress

Substrate-mediated growth of vanadium carbide with controllable structure as high performance electrocatalysts for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Transition metal carbides (TMCs) are promising alternatives to noble-metal based catalysts in many fields. Controlling the morphology of TMCs is an effective approach to promote the catalytic performance. We here report a substrate-mediated method to direct the growth of vanadium carbide (VC) using graphene oxide as the nucleation and growth substrate. By carefully choosing the synthesis conditions, we can tune the structure of VC nanoparticles from cuboctahedron (VC-ch) to cubic (VC-cb). The obtained hybrid of VC-ch on graphene sheets (VC-ch/GS) shows excellent catalytic activity towards the triiodide reduction reaction in terms of the charge transfer resistance (Rct = 0.27 Ω cm2), outperforming its counterpart VC-cb/GS (Rct = 1.69 Ω cm2). The energy conversion efficiency of the Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) with the VC-ch counter electrode (CE) reached 7.92%, comparable to a Pt based CE of 7.79%. Experimental combined with theoretical calculation results suggest that the high catalytic activity of VC-ch may originate from the special atom packing state of the VC(111) facet.

Graphical abstract: Substrate-mediated growth of vanadium carbide with controllable structure as high performance electrocatalysts for dye-sensitized solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 Jan 2017
Accepted
27 Mar 2017
First published
18 May 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2017,7, 26710-26716

Substrate-mediated growth of vanadium carbide with controllable structure as high performance electrocatalysts for dye-sensitized solar cells

J. Jin, Z. Wei, X. Qiao, H. Fan and L. Cui, RSC Adv., 2017, 7, 26710 DOI: 10.1039/C7RA00547D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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