30/05/2023, 18:05 Beyond Guano-Doped Graphene | ACS Nano

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Beyond Guano-Doped Graphene

Raymond E. Schaak*

 Cite this: ACS Nano 2020, 14, 3, 2555–2556

Publication Date: March 24, 2020 
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.0c02181
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SUBJECTS: Catalysis, Catalysts, Nanoscience, Nanotechnology, 

It has been two months since ACS Nano published the widely read and discussed paper by
Martin Pumera and co-workers on a guano-doped graphene catalyst, (1) and it has gone viral.
It has been viewed over 100,000 times and is already our most-read paper of the past year.
The title, “Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalyic Effect?”, was clearly
attention-grabbing, and it struck a nerve with many readers.

It is well-known that graphene is a good electrocatalyst and that it can be made better by
doping it with heteroatoms, i.e., non-carbon elements such as nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus,
and boron. It is also known that multi-element dopants, where two or more heteroatoms are
substituted into graphene, can achieve similar enhancements in catalytic performance. The
Pumera paper showed that guano could be used as a cheap and abundant reagent to
produce multi-element-doped graphene having excellent electrocatalytic performance for two

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industrially relevant reactions: the oxygen reduction reaction for fuel cells and the hydrogen
evolution reaction for electrolyzers. The not-so-subtle subtext of the paper was thatas  even
guano could be used to enhance the catalytic performance of graphene, why would we use
anything else when guano is so cheap and abundant? On a more philosophical level, if we are
reasonably certain that almost any combination of heteroatom dopants in graphene will
produce a better catalyst, is there any reason to do so? Considering the large number of
possible combinations of heteroatom dopants, one could envision an almost limitless
number of papers being written and published, but what do we gain from this endeavor?

To be clear, the field of heteroatom-doped graphene catalysis is alive and well, and there
continue to be important advances that significantly expand our fundamental understanding
of these systems and their potential uses across a wide range of practical applications. At
ACS Nano, we see a large number of submissions that focus on heteroatom-doped graphene
catalysts. Most of these are fine papers, and they provide additional examples that reinforce
existing design guidelines for enhancing catalysis. However, for this field, which has matured
to the point where researchers essentially know in advance that many heteroatom dopants
will increase catalytic performance, how does continuing these investigations advance the
field? More fundamentally, for a field that has matured to this level, what is the bar for
significantly advancing it and pushing it forward into new or unexpected directions? These
are questions that we ask in assessing submitted manuscripts (2) and that we expect
researchers to ask when proposing and carrying out their explorations.

One of the key goals of ACS Nano is to bring fields together and to
push nanoscience, nanotechnology, and the areas that we impact
forward, defining the future of nanoscience and nanotechnology and
significantly advancing multidisciplinary research.

In another area, albeit somewhat less colorfully, Jonathan Coleman and his co-authors
recently compared the results of published studies of two-dimensional (2D) materials to
those of three-dimensional (3D) materials for energy storage and found that the latter group
most often resulted in better figures of merit. (3) Once again, it is important to look critically
at a field to decide where advances are being made as fields develop. Such field-wide
introspection enables us, as a community, to advance more productively and efficiently. In
addition, as fields develop, there is much to be learned from these global insights.

One of the key goals of ACS Nano is to bring fields together and to push nanoscience,
nanotechnology, and the areas that we impact forward, defining the future of nanoscience
and nanotechnology and significantly advancing multidisciplinary research. (4−7) Papers that
simply reinforce existing knowledge or that describe results that can be considered obvious
in a mature field generally do not meet our criteria for accelerating advances. On the other
hand, we are excited by papers that provide significant new insights and change the way we
think about such systems or that describe new capabilities that move systems in a novel

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direction. ACS Nano has published many important papers in the fields highlighted above—
heteroatom-doped graphene catalysis and energy storage materials—and will continue  to do
so. We are excited to see the new directions in which these and other fields are headed.
Researchers are gaining significant new fundamental insights and developing new
applications that leverage the unique properties, processability, and design capabilities of
nanoscale materials.

Moving beyond the Pumera paper on guano-doped graphene catalysis and the visceral
reaction to it that many felt when reading it, it is important to take a step back and to think
more generally about how the issues it highlights may apply to other fields. What does it take
to push a field forward or to move it in a new direction? What is the “guano-doped graphene
catalyst” result in other fields? What are the results that researchers, in essence, already
know before they begin and therefore do not find surprising or even interesting? What are the
capabilities that are so well-established that the novelty shifts to investigations of what can
be done with or because of them? What should be done in a field to advance it versus what is
easy to do?

Moving beyond the Pumera paper on guano-doped graphene

catalysis and the visceral reaction to it that many felt when reading
it, it is important to take a step back and to think more generally
about how the issues it highlights may apply to other fields.

One could argue that many fields (or subfields) reach a point of maturity where certain
results become obvious and unsurprising. Indeed, that is the goal! Researchers strive to gain
sufficient knowledge, understanding, and intuition so that they can design a system, make it,
study it, and have it function the way they intend. The point at which this transition happens
will be different for different fields of research; what the “obvious” results and capabilities are,
how long it takes to reach maturity, and what it takes to move the field forward and/or in new
directions will not be the same for all systems, applications, or research areas. However,
when this point is reached, fields necessarily evolve, and the definition of “cutting edge”
changes. In our discussions, we constantly make and remake these assessments. (8) These
conversations keep research exciting, vibrant, alive, and unpredictable, and ACS Nano is
thrilled to be a part of this evolution across many fields within the broad nanoscience and
nanotechnology community.

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  

Author Information Jump To

Corresponding Author
Raymond E. Schaak,  Associate Editor,  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7468-8181, 
Email: res20@psu.edu

Notes

Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the
ACS.

References Jump To

This article references 8 other publications.

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Cited By
This article is cited by 1 publications.

1. Wojciech Kiciński, Sławomir Dyjak. Transition metal impurities in carbon-based materials: Pitfalls, artifacts
and deleterious effects. Carbon 2020, 168 , 748-845. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2020.06.004

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