Abstract
The development of a low cost and highly active alternative to the commercial Pt/C catalysts used in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) requires a facile and environmentally-friendly synthesis process to facilitate large-scale production and provide an effective replacement. Transition metals, in conjunction with nitrogen-doped carbon, are among the most promising substitute catalysts because of their high activity, inexpensive composition, and high carbon monoxide tolerance. We prepared a polyaniline-derived Fe-N-C catalyst for oxygen reduction using a facile one-pot process with no additional reagents. This process was carried out by ultrasonicating a mixture containing an iron precursor, an aniline monomer, and carbon black. The half-wave potential of the synthesized Fe-N-C catalyst for the ORR was only 10 mV less than that of a commercial Pt/C catalyst. The optimized Fe-N-C catalyst showed outstanding performance in a practical anion exchange membrane fuel cell (AEMFC), suggesting its potential as an alternative to commercial Pt/C catalysts for the ORR.
Highlights
Electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction and evolution reactions are considered crucial for the development of sustainable energy storage and conversion devices, such as metal-air batteries, water splitting processes, and fuel cells[1,2,3,4]
We studied the electrocatalytic activity of Fe-pyPANI-K catalysts, in which the notation “py” denotes that the PANI was pyrolyzed at the temperature specified at the end of the sample name and “-K” denotes a sample that contains carbon black
We have demonstrated a facile synthesis strategy for iron- and aniline-based non-precious metal catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction
Summary
Electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction and evolution reactions are considered crucial for the development of sustainable energy storage and conversion devices, such as metal-air batteries, water splitting processes, and fuel cells[1,2,3,4]. The scarcity and low CO tolerance of Pt has led to many attempts to develop Pt-free catalysts from non-Pt group metals (non-PGM) to replace the Pt-based systems These non-platinum catalysts solve the problems caused by Pt metal and dramatically decrease the cost of the catalyst, and new non-PGM systems with high ORR activity are sought. Carbon-based non-PGM catalysts, N-doped carbon catalysts in conjunction with transition metals (TM-N-C), have been studied extensively[9,10,11] These catalysts are currently considered to be the most promising candidates to replace Pt-based systems because of their high ORR activity and CO tolerance and inexpensive materials. Wu et al reported a PANI-derived Fe-Co-doped carbon catalyst that exhibited outstanding performance and durability in an acidic electrolyte[19]. We evaluated the practical single-cell performance of a membrane-electrode assembly (MEA) that employed the synthesized Fe-N-C as the cathode
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