Halloysite-derived nitrogen doped carbon electrocatalysts for anion exchange membrane fuel cells

Developing the low-cost, highly active carbonaceous materials for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysts has been a high-priority research direction for durable fuel cells. In this paper, two novel N-doped carbonaceous materials with flaky and rod-like morphology using the natural halloysite as template are obtained from urea nitrogen source as well as glucose (denoted as GU) and furfural (denoted as FU) carbon precursors, respectively, which can be directly applied as metal-free electrocatalysts for ORR in alkaline electrolyte. Importantly, compared with a benchmark Pt/C (20wt%) catalyst, the as-prepared carbon catalysts demonstrate higher retention in diffusion limiting current density (after 3000 cycles) and enhanced methanol tolerances with only 50-60mV negative shift in half-wave potentials. In addition, electrocatalytic activity, durability and methanol tolerant the underneath reasons of the outperformance of rod-like catalysts over the flaky are revealed. At last, the produced carbonaceous catalysts are also used as cathodes in the single cell H-2/O-2 anion exchange membrane fuel cell (AEMFC), in which the rod-like FU delivers a peak power density as high as 703 mW cm(-2) (vs. 1106 mW cm(-2) with a Pt/C benchmark cathode catalyst).