Improving Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity through Defect Engineering of Atomically Dispersed Iron Electrocatalysts for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

Abstract

Atomically dispersed and nitrogen-coordinated iron catalysts(Fe-N-Cs) have the potential as an alternative to platinum-group metal catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). However, in the context of practical proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) applications, the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) performances of Fe-N-Cs remain unsatisfactory. To address this issue, a defect engineering strategy has been developed to prepare high-performance PEMFC MEAs using atomically dispersed Fe-N-C catalysts. This strategy involves the use of a zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF)-derived nitrogen-doped carbon with additional CO2 activation to create atomically dispersed iron sites with a controlled number of defects. By adjusting the extent of defect formation in the carbon plane using CO2 activation, it is anticipated that changes in the oxidation state and spin state of the Fe center will modify the electronic structure of the Fe-N4 active sites. The Fe-N-C species with the optimal number of defect sites exhibit excellent ORR performance with a high half-wave potential of 0.83 V in 0.5 M H2SO4. Fine-tuning the number of defects can be optimized the ORR activity by adjusting the contribution of the Fe d-orbitals to the reaction intermediate binding energies. The resulting MEA based on the defect-engineered Fe-NC catalyst exhibits remarkable peak power densities in both H2/O2 and H2/air fuel cells, making it one of the most active atomically dispersed catalyst materials at the MEA level.