Porous Organic Polymer Gel Derived Electrocatalysts for Efficient Oxygen Reduction

The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), as one of the most critical but promising reactions for energy conversion, has attracted increasing research interest. Recent reports have evidenced that carbonization of heteroatoms doped porous organic polymers (POPs) is an effective approach toward highly efficient ORR electrocatalysts. We herein report a versatile ternary copolymerization strategy to synthesize stable POPs gel with tunable doping of heteroatoms (N, S, F) and Fe species, leading to significant enhancement in surface area and porosity. Carbonization of these POPs afford efficient ORR electrocatalyst with optimized composition, hierarchical porous structure and prominent catalytic activities in both alkaline and neutral conditions. The optimized catalyst (TF-C-900) exhibited an onset potential (E-onset) of 1.01 V and half-wave potential (E-1/2) of 0.88 V in 0.1 M KOH solution. These performance metrics are even comparable to those of the Pt/C (0.99 and 0.85). In addition, the TF-C-900 also showed superior stability and advantage of methanol tolerance, enabling them to be a competitive cathode electrocatalysts for alkaline fuel cell.