Journal
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY A
Volume 7, Issue 19, Pages 11792-11801Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c9ta02338k
Keywords
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Funding
- National Key R&D Program of China [2017YFE0120500]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [51502099]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [HUST: 2016YXMS211, 2018KFYYXJJ051]
- Chinese Scholarship Council [201806160049]
- UNL Holland Computing Center
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The scarcity and weak durability of precious metal catalysts are among the biggest obstacles to achieving cost-effective electrocatalysts in fuel cells and metal-air batteries. Hence, it is imperative to develop low-cost non-precious metal catalysts with comparable oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity to precious metal catalysts. Herein, we report a highly effective strategy for the facile synthesis of Fe/N-functionalized 3D porous carbon networks. A major advantage of the newly designed catalyst is that ultrafine Fe4N nanoparticles are grown and uniformly mounted on the carbon framework upon pyrolysis treatment at 800 degrees C, and co-exist with numerous in situ formed Fe-N-4 moieties in the carbon matrix, being evidenced by using X-ray absorption and photoelectron spectroscopy. The new electrocatalysts exhibit high ORR activity, comparable/superior to that of the state-of-the-art Fe/N-carbon based catalysts reported to date. Specifically, the catalysts show a half-wave potential of 0.890 V (vs. RHE) and a limited current density of 6.18 mA cm(-2). By resorting to experimental measurements and density-functional theory (DFT) calculations, the synergistic effects between Fe-N-4 moieties and the Fe4N support are identified for the first time, which play a key role in boosting the catalytic performance of the Fe/N-functionalized porous carbon networks.
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