| The excessive use of fossil fuel has produced serious environmentalproblems such as acid rain and atmospheric haze. Fuel cell as a kind of clearenergy, the commercialization of which is identified as one of the efficientways to relieve these current problems. However, platinum for catalyzing thecathodic oxygen reduction reaction （ORR） has seriously hampered theprocess of their commercialization because of its exorbitant price and scarceresource. Thus to develop novel nonprecious metal catalyst for oxygenreduction reaction is always the focus of academia. Porous carbon because ofits high specific surface area has been playing important role in molecularsieve, catalyst support and porous electrode. Therefore, developing porouscarbon with abundance active sites as well as excellent electron or ion transferand reactant transport property will probably be an efficient way to get thecatalyst with high activity for catalysing oxygen reduction reaction.At present, the heteroatom doped carbon materials as catalysts foroxygen reduction reaction have exhibited promising application prospect.This dissertation developed a novel three-dimensional （3D） sulfur-nitrogenco-doped carbon foams （S-N-CF） with hierarchical pore structures, using aconvenient, economical, and scalable method. The experimental results havedemonstrated that the obtained3D S-N-CF exhibits better catalytic activity,longer-term stability and higher methanol tolerance than commercial Pt/Ccatalysts. Such excellent performances may be attributed to the synergisticeffect, including high catalytic sites for ORR provided by high S-Nheteroatom loading, excellent reactant transport caused by hierarchical porestructures and high electron transfer rate provided by3D continuousnetworks. Moreover, to explore the potential value of these3D hierarchical porecarbon foams, it has been applied to Li-S batteries research. The conductiveporous carbon framework of carbon foam tightly constrains sulphur nanofillergrowth within its channels and provides essential electrical contact to theinsulating sulphur. The experimental results have proved the excellentperformance of hierarchical pore carbon foam-sulphur composite as cathodefor Li-S batteries.In addition, a novel porous composite named C-N-Al2O3-Ni has beensysthesised by one step via spray pyrolysis method. The electrochemistrymeasurement results have demonstrated that the obtained C-N-Al2O3-Niexhibites better stability and higher methanol tolerance than commercialPt/C catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction （ORR）. It’s also suitable forlargescale industrial production on account of its convenient process andinexpensive investment. |
