Waste to wealth: Oxygen-nitrogen-sulfur codoped lignin-derived carbon microspheres from hazardous black liquors for high-performance DSSCs  

作　　者：Wenjie Cheng Caichao Wan Xingong Li Huayun Chai Zhenxu Yang Song Wei Jiahui Su Xueer Tang Yiqiang Wu 

机构地区：[1]College of Materials Science and Engineering,Central South University of Forestry and Technology,Changsha 410004,Hunan,China [2]School of Biomedical Engineering,The University of Sydney,Sydney,New South Wales 2006,Australia [3]The University of Sydney Nano Institute,The University of Sydney,Sydney,New South Wales 2006,Australia

出　　处：《Journal of Energy Chemistry》2023年第8期549-563,I0013,共16页能源化学（英文版）

基　　金：supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31890771 and 31901249);the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST (2019QNRC001);the Hunan Provincial Technical Innovation Platform and Talent Program in Science and Technology (2020RC3041);the Training Program for Excellent Young Innovators of Changsha (kq2106056);the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (2022JJ30079);the Postgraduate Technology Innovation Project of Central South University of Forestry and Technology (2022CX02017)。

摘　　要：Carbon materials are effective substitutes for Pt counter electrodes(CEs) in dye-sensitized solar cells(DSSCs). However, many of these materials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene, are expensive and require complex preparation process. Herein, waste lignin, recycled from hazardous black liquors,is used to create oxygen-nitrogen-sulfur codoped carbon microspheres for use in DSSC CEs through the facile process of low-temperature preoxidation and high-temperature self-activation. The large number of ester bonds formed by preoxidation increase the degree of cross-linking of the lignin chains, leading to the formation of highly disordered carbon with ample defect sites during pyrolysis. The presence of organic O/N/S components in the waste lignin results in high O/N/S doping of the pyrolysed carbon,which increases the electrolyte ion adsorption and accelerates the electron transfer at the CE/electrolyte interface, as confirmed by density functional theory(DFT) calculations. The presence of inorganic impurities enables the construction of a hierarchical micropore-rich carbon structure through the etching effect during self-activation, which can provide abundant catalytically active sites for the reversible adsorption/desorption of electrolyte ions. Under these synergistic effects, the DSSCs that use this novel carbon CE achieve a quite high power-conversion efficiency of 9.22%. To the best of our knowledge, the value is a new record reported so far for biomass-carbon-based DSSCs.

关 键 词：LIGNIN Carbon microspheres CODOPING Hierarchical pores DSSCS 

分 类 号：TM914.4[电气工程—电力电子与电力传动] TQ127.11[化学工程—无机化工]