Non-modified Thermally-derived Onion-like Carbon As Electrocatalyst for [VO]2+/[VO2]+ Redox Flow Battery

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that unmodified nanodiamond-derived onion-like carbon can serve as an effective electrocatalyst for vanadium redox flow batteries, achieving high performance without surface modifications.

Contribution

It introduces the use of non-modified onion-like carbon as an electrocatalyst, showing comparable performance to modified catalysts in vanadium redox flow batteries.

Findings

Reversibility and catalytic activity are comparable to modified catalysts.

Physical and electrochemical analyses explain the high performance.

Effective as drop-coated electrodes on glassy carbon or carbon felt.

Abstract

We report the nanodiamond-derived onion-like carbon successfully applied as an electrocatalyst for [VO]2+/[VO2]+ redox flow battery, as drop-coated (in the as-synthesized state) on glassy carbon or carbon felt electrodes. We show that its reversibility and catalytic activity in its as-synthesized state was comparable to some of the best data in the literature which employed surface modifications. We clarified the origin of such excellent performances by physical/electrochemical analyses.