Abstract
Metal nitrogen-carbon catalysts have become a promising alternative to platinum-based catalysts in fuel cells due to their high stability and platinum-like activity. However, the corrosion and deactivation of active sites in the solution still restrict the inherent reaction kinetic rate. For this reason, it is important to stabilize the catalyst through a controllable doping strategy to obtain high activity catalysts for oxygen reduction reactions (ORR). Herein, the pyrolysis strategy is demonstrated in the synthesis of iron-based catalysts co-doped with nitrogen and biomass-derived phosphorus (denoted as N, P-Fe/C), and the pore size of the catalyst is mostly distributed at 1 nm or 50 nm, respectively. The half-wave potential (0.893 V) and the current density (4.05 mA cm−2) at 0.85 V of the catalyst exceed those of the commercial Pt/C. The remarkable ORR performance can be attributed to its distinct hierarchical pore structure, the modulation effect of nitrogen and phosphorus co-doping on the carbon matrix, and the combined effect of the FeNx active sites, which improves the accessibility of reactants and accelerating the absorption/desorption of the reaction intermediate, thereby increasing reaction rates. And N, P-Fe/C has great potential as a promising substitute for platinum-based catalysts.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 21103107 and 91745112]; the Key Project of Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology, China [15DZ1206902]; and the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality [19DZ2271100].
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Yi Chen, Shengnan Xie, and Linke Li. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yi Chen and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Jinchen Fan, Qiaoxia Li, Yulin Min, and Qunjie Xu were responsible for the design of the whole experiment, the results of the discussion and analysis, and the submission to the journal. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Chen, Y., Xie, S., Li, L. et al. Highly accessible sites of Fe-N on biomass-derived N, P co-doped hierarchical porous carbon for oxygen reduction reaction. J Nanopart Res 23, 68 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-021-05176-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-021-05176-7