Unveiling the High-activity Origin of Single-atom Iron Catalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Overview

Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Specialty Science

Date 2018 Jun 13

PMID 29891686

Citations 31

Authors

Liu Yang

Daojian Cheng

Haoxiang Xu

Xiaofei Zeng

Xin Wan

Jianglan Shui

Zhonghua Xiang

Dapeng Cao

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

It is still a grand challenge to develop a highly efficient nonprecious-metal electrocatalyst to replace the Pt-based catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Here, we propose a surfactant-assisted method to synthesize single-atom iron catalysts (SA-Fe/NG). The half-wave potential of SA-Fe/NG is only 30 mV less than 20% Pt/C in acidic medium, while it is 30 mV superior to 20% Pt/C in alkaline medium. Moreover, SA-Fe/NG shows extremely high stability with only 12 mV and 15 mV negative shifts after 5,000 cycles in acidic and alkaline media, respectively. Impressively, the SA-Fe/NG-based acidic proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) exhibits a high power density of 823 mW cm Combining experimental results and density-functional theory (DFT) calculations, we further reveal that the origin of high-ORR activity of SA-Fe/NG is from the Fe-pyrrolic-N species, because such molecular incorporation is the key, leading to the active site increase in an order of magnitude which successfully clarifies the bottleneck puzzle of why a small amount of iron in the SA-Fe catalysts can exhibit extremely superior ORR activity.

Citing Articles

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