Construction of Heteroatom-Doped Porous Carbon Architectures for Energy and Sensing Applications

In this chapter, we have concentrated on the main electrocatalytic oxygen processes, oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and water splitting oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and biosensors based on porous carbon architectures, which are more important areas of research because of the rise in demand for energy management, supply, and disease diagnosis. Heteroatom-doped carbon hollow spheres are very useful because they have a large surface area, mesoporosity, spherical wall thicknesses, edge plane defect sites, catalytic active sites, and fast heterogeneous electron-transfer rates. These properties are very important for making commercial devices. This chapter provides an overview of hollow carbon nanospheres that are doped with single and double heteroatoms, as well as cobalt oxide. These carbon compounds function as dual catalysts for OER and ORR, as well as an effective electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction process in both acidic and alkaline media. Electrocatalytically, heteroatom-doped carbon sphere-modified electrodes can simultaneously and specifically identify and determine the analytes, while also validating the target species in real samples. N-doped hollow carbon spheres coated-Co3O4 functioned as an efficient dual-function oxygen electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution and oxygen reduction processes and also as a biosensor for highly effective electrochemical sensing of acetaminophen. A symmetric supercapacitor using dual heteroatom-doped and SBA-15 templated porous carbon was also discussed.