Microwave Reaction: A Facile Economic and Green Method to Synthesize Oxygen-Decorated Graphene from Carbon Cloth for Oxygen Electrocatalysis

Oxygen-functionalized graphene is active for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). However, the high costs, complex instruments and pollution risks in the synthesis process make oxygen-functionalized graphene difficult to be industrialized. The microwave reaction has originally been used to remove the oxygen groups on graphene structures. In this work, the microwave reaction is reversed to decorate oxygen groups on graphene from carbon cloth, by solely using a household microwave oven. After microwave treatment, the carbon cloth shows greatly improved OER performance with a much lower overpotential of 417 mV, in comparison with the pristine carbon cloth (627 mV), due to the decoration of oxygen groups on graphene, a higher electron conductivity and a higher specific surface area. Meanwhile, an overpotential of 542 mV at 10 mA cm−2 is obtained in an acidic electrolyte, which is one of the best values for non-precious OER catalysts in acidic media. This work provides a facile, green and economic method for producing functionalized carbon catalysts for OER.