The role of the central Fe atom in the N4-macrocyclic structure for the enhancement of oxygen reduction reaction in a heteroatom nitrogen-carbon nanosphere

In the present work, we demonstrated the significance of a central transition metal, Fe, in a N-4-macrocycle for the enhancement of ORR activity and other electrochemical properties. The catalysts were synthesized by a solution plasma process. Fe-phthalocyanine/benzene and phthalocyanine/benzene were chosen as the precursors of Fe-phthalocyanine based mesoporous carbon (FP-MCS) and phthalocyanine based mesoporous carbon (P-MCS) catalysts, respectively. The existence of Fe-N-4 and N-4 macrocyclic structures was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. From the chemical bonding structure, FP-MCS demonstrated that the Me-N peaks increased as the amount of iron-phthalocyanine introduced in the experiment increased. The dominant active site was shifted from pyridinic nitrogen to Me-N when iron-phthalocyanine was present. The analysis of Tof-SIMS indicated that the relative intensity of FeN4Cy+ ions was approximately 50% of the total amount of ionized species of Sigma FeNxCy+. Both XPS and Tof-SIMS results confirmed that the Fe-N-4 site was the most favourable structure in the matrix. From CV measurements, the cathodic peak current corresponding to ORR activity slightly shifted from -0.19 V to -0.17 V when the active site changed from N-4 to Fe-N-4 macrocyclic structure. The current density increased more than 30% in the presence of iron. Based on the calculation of Koutecky-Levich plots, the electron transfer numbers for ORR reaction in P- and FP-MCSs were 3.25 and 3.98, respectively. These results clearly demonstrated that the presence of a Fe central ion in the N-4-acrocyclic structure significantly enhanced the ORR and charge transfer number in ORR activities.