Permanent Nanobubbles in Water: Liquefied Hollow Carbon Spheres Break the Limiting Diffusion Current of Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Debabrata Moitra; Arvind Ganesan; Fan Wang; Liqi Qiu; Kevin Siniard; Zhenzhen Yang; Shannon M. Mahurin; Lilin He; Kai Li; Hongjun Liu; De en Jiang; Tao Wang; Sheng Dai

doi:10.1021/jacs.4c13875

Permanent Nanobubbles in Water: Liquefied Hollow Carbon Spheres Break the Limiting Diffusion Current of Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Debabrata Moitra
, Arvind Ganesan
, Fan Wang
, Liqi Qiu
, Kevin Siniard
, Zhenzhen Yang
, Shannon M. Mahurin
, Lilin He
, Kai Li
, Hongjun Liu
, De en Jiang
, Tao Wang
, Sheng Dai

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

Porous liquids have traditionally been designed with sterically hindered solvents. Alternatively, recent efforts rely on dispersing microporous frameworks in simpler solvents like water. Here we report a unique strategy to construct macroporous water by selectively incorporating hydrophilicity on the surfaces of hydrophobic hollow carbon spheres (HCS). Specifically, we show that the stable dispersion surface ionized HCS in water while retaining the inherent porosity. The electrocatalytic conversion of small gas molecules in aqueous electrolytes is limited by the concentration and diffusion rates of gas molecules in water. In this case, macroporous water exhibited 6 times gas uptake compared to nonporous (pure) water. By leveraging the high gas capacity and enhanced diffusion kinetics, the limiting diffusion current of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in macroporous water is 2 times that in nonporous water, offering promising prospects for sustainable energy conversion technologies.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	3421-3427
Number of pages	7
Journal	Journal of the American Chemical Society
Volume	147
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c13875
State	Published - Jan 29 2025

Funding

The research was supported financially by the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research under the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). This research used resources at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The beam time was allocated to GP-SANS (CG2) on proposal number IPTS-33565.1.]

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10.1021/jacs.4c13875

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Moitra, D., Ganesan, A., Wang, F., Qiu, L., Siniard, K., Yang, Z., Mahurin, S. M., He, L., Li, K., Liu, H., Jiang, D. E., Wang, T., & Dai, S. (2025). Permanent Nanobubbles in Water: Liquefied Hollow Carbon Spheres Break the Limiting Diffusion Current of Oxygen Reduction Reaction. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 147(4), 3421-3427. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c13875

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title = "Permanent Nanobubbles in Water: Liquefied Hollow Carbon Spheres Break the Limiting Diffusion Current of Oxygen Reduction Reaction",

abstract = "Porous liquids have traditionally been designed with sterically hindered solvents. Alternatively, recent efforts rely on dispersing microporous frameworks in simpler solvents like water. Here we report a unique strategy to construct macroporous water by selectively incorporating hydrophilicity on the surfaces of hydrophobic hollow carbon spheres (HCS). Specifically, we show that the stable dispersion surface ionized HCS in water while retaining the inherent porosity. The electrocatalytic conversion of small gas molecules in aqueous electrolytes is limited by the concentration and diffusion rates of gas molecules in water. In this case, macroporous water exhibited 6 times gas uptake compared to nonporous (pure) water. By leveraging the high gas capacity and enhanced diffusion kinetics, the limiting diffusion current of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in macroporous water is 2 times that in nonporous water, offering promising prospects for sustainable energy conversion technologies.",

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Moitra, D, Ganesan, A, Wang, F, Qiu, L, Siniard, K, Yang, Z , Mahurin, SM , He, L , Li, K, Liu, H, Jiang, DE, Wang, T & Dai, S 2025, 'Permanent Nanobubbles in Water: Liquefied Hollow Carbon Spheres Break the Limiting Diffusion Current of Oxygen Reduction Reaction', Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 147, no. 4, pp. 3421-3427. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c13875

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T2 - Liquefied Hollow Carbon Spheres Break the Limiting Diffusion Current of Oxygen Reduction Reaction

AU - Moitra, Debabrata

AU - Ganesan, Arvind

AU - Wang, Fan

AU - Qiu, Liqi

AU - Siniard, Kevin

AU - Yang, Zhenzhen

AU - Mahurin, Shannon M.

AU - He, Lilin

AU - Li, Kai

AU - Liu, Hongjun

AU - Jiang, De en

AU - Wang, Tao

AU - Dai, Sheng

PY - 2025/1/29

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N2 - Porous liquids have traditionally been designed with sterically hindered solvents. Alternatively, recent efforts rely on dispersing microporous frameworks in simpler solvents like water. Here we report a unique strategy to construct macroporous water by selectively incorporating hydrophilicity on the surfaces of hydrophobic hollow carbon spheres (HCS). Specifically, we show that the stable dispersion surface ionized HCS in water while retaining the inherent porosity. The electrocatalytic conversion of small gas molecules in aqueous electrolytes is limited by the concentration and diffusion rates of gas molecules in water. In this case, macroporous water exhibited 6 times gas uptake compared to nonporous (pure) water. By leveraging the high gas capacity and enhanced diffusion kinetics, the limiting diffusion current of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in macroporous water is 2 times that in nonporous water, offering promising prospects for sustainable energy conversion technologies.

AB - Porous liquids have traditionally been designed with sterically hindered solvents. Alternatively, recent efforts rely on dispersing microporous frameworks in simpler solvents like water. Here we report a unique strategy to construct macroporous water by selectively incorporating hydrophilicity on the surfaces of hydrophobic hollow carbon spheres (HCS). Specifically, we show that the stable dispersion surface ionized HCS in water while retaining the inherent porosity. The electrocatalytic conversion of small gas molecules in aqueous electrolytes is limited by the concentration and diffusion rates of gas molecules in water. In this case, macroporous water exhibited 6 times gas uptake compared to nonporous (pure) water. By leveraging the high gas capacity and enhanced diffusion kinetics, the limiting diffusion current of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in macroporous water is 2 times that in nonporous water, offering promising prospects for sustainable energy conversion technologies.

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JF - Journal of the American Chemical Society

IS - 4

ER -

Permanent Nanobubbles in Water: Liquefied Hollow Carbon Spheres Break the Limiting Diffusion Current of Oxygen Reduction Reaction

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