Journal
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY A
Volume 4, Issue 33, Pages 12768-12773Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c6ta05075a
Keywords
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Funding
- Ministry of Science and Technology of China [2012CB215500, 2012CB932800]
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Ternary Fe/N/C catalysts are regarded as the most promising candidates for low-cost alternatives to Pt for catalyzing the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). High-temperature pyrolysis of N-containing carbon precursors in the presence of Fe salts has been a common and efficient route to prepare Fe/N/C catalysts. However, simple pyrolysis usually leads to a large weight loss of N-containing precursors, which not only increases the overall cost of the catalysts, but also results in the catalysts having a low density of active sites. We show herein that this problem can be effectively overcome by dispersing a highly hydrosoluble polymer precursor, namely, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), in NaCl crystallites. The use of the hydrosoluble polymer precursor enables efficient dispersion and confinement of the precursor in NaCl crystallites in a simple solvent evaporation process. The subsequent pyrolysis process not only shows little weight loss, but also produces a mesoporous Fe/N/C ORR catalyst with a remarkably higher specific surface area (414.5 m(2) g(-1)) and ORR activity (half-wave potentials, E-1/2 = 0.793 V and 0.878 V vs. RHE, respectively, in acidic and alkaline media) than those of the material prepared without using NaCl confinement (72.9 m(2) g(-1), E-1/2 = 0.634 V and 0.785 V, respectively, in acidic and alkaline media).
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