Mesoporous carbon doped with N,S heteroatoms prepared by one-pot auto-assembly of molecular precursor for electrocatalytic hydrogen peroxide synthesis

A bottom-up approach based on hydrothermal carbonization of organic molecules has been used to prepare carbon materials doped with either nitrogen or sulfur or both. To generate mesopores, ZnCl2 has been used as removable structure-directing agent. The final mean pore size depended on the type of dopant element. The doped materials exhibited remarkable activity as electrocatalyst in oxygen reduction reaction with nearly complete selectivity to H2O2 synthesis. N-doped catalyst with an intermediate nitrogen content (4 wt%) and around 80% of pore volume in the mesopore range provided significantly better performance than a catalyst of comparable composition but differing in the porous structure, i.e. 70 % of pore volume in the microporous range.The financial support of European Commission (FREECATS project, FP7 Grant agreement nº 280658), from Spanish Ministry MINECO and the European Regional Development Fund (project ENE2013-48816-C5-5-R), and Regional Government of Aragon (DGA-ESF-T66 Grupo Consolidado) are gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewe