In the present study, wood-based carbon materials were investigated as catalysts for the electro-reduction of oxygen (ORR) and electro-oxidation of hydrogen (HOR) in an alkaline medium. Activated wood-based carbon and black liqueur were doped with cheap nitrogen precursor, dicyandiamide (DCDA) and were modified with cobalt nanoparticles. The doping was done by pyrolysing samples at 800 °C in the presence of DCDA. The cobalt nanoparticles were deposited on the the N-doped wood-based carbon and N-doped black liqueur using morpholine borane as a reducing agent. The synthesized catalysts were characterized using TEM, XPS, Raman Spectroscopy and ICP-OES. For electrochemical measurements, the glassy carbon (GC) electrodes were modified with synthesized catalysts and the experiments were carried out in 0.1 M KOH solution employing rotating disk electrode (RDE) method. For modifying the electrodes, a suspension (4 mg ml^–1) was made in 2% polyvinylidenefluoride in N-methyl-2-pyrrolydone solution.

It was found that the N-doped wood-based carbon and N-doped black liqueur samples modified with cobalt nanoparticles show good activity for oxygen reduction and hydrogen oxidation. The combination of metal nanoparticles and N-doped wood-based carbon and N-doped black liqueur opens up new possibilities for design of the next generation catalysts.

Acknowledgment

This research was funded by a grant (M-ERA.NET-1/2016) from the Research Council of Lithuania. The author’s research was performed in cooperation with the University of Tartu (Estonia), Latvian State Institute of Wood Chemistry (Latvia) and Horizon Pulp&Paper Ltd (Estonia) under the M-ERA.NET 2 project “Wood-based Carbon Catalysts for Low-temperature Fuel Cells (WoBaCat)“ (reg. No. project3213).