Huazhong University of Science and Technology - School of Optical and Electronic Information; Huazhong University of Science and Technology - Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics
Huazhong University of Science and Technology - School of Optical and Electronic Information; Huazhong University of Science and Technology - Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics
Beijing University of Chemical Technology - Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering; University of Nebraska at Lincoln - Department of Chemistry
The scarcity and weak durability of precious metal catalysts are among biggest obstacles to achieving cost-effective electrocatalysts in fuel cells. Hence, it is imperative to develop low-cost non-precious metal catalysts with comparable oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity to the precious metal catalysts. Herein, we report a highly effective strategy for facile synthesis of Fe/N-functionalized 3D porous carbon networks. A major advantage of the newly designed catalyst is that ultrafine Fe4N nanoparticles are grown and uniformly mounted on the carbon framework upon pyrolysis treatment at 800 °C, and co-existing with numerous in-situ formed Fe-Nx moieties in the carbon matrix, being evidenced by using X-ray absorption and photoelectron spectroscopy. The new electrocatalysts yield high ORR activity, comparable/superior to that of the state-of-the-art Fe/N-carbon based catalysts reported to date. Specifically, the catalysts show a half-wave potential of 0.890 V and a limited current density of 6.18 mA cm-2, both surpassing the commercial Pt/C. By resorting to the experimental measurements and density-functional theory (DFT) calculations, the synergistic effects between Fe-N4 moieties and the Fe4N support are identified for the first time, which play a key role in boosting catalytic performance of the Fe/N-functionalized porous carbon networks.
Ao, Xiang and Zhang, Wei and Li, Zhishan and Lv, Lin and Ruan, Yunjun and Chen, Zhenhua and Xue, Kan-Hao and Wu, Hong-Hui and Chiang, Wei-Hung and Miao, Xiangshui and Wang, Chundong and Zeng, Xiao Cheng, Unravelling the High-Activity Nature of Fe-N-C Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction: The Extraordinary Synergy between Fe-Nx and Fe4N (November 16, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3285808 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3285808
This version of the paper has not been formally peer reviewed.
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