Issue 16, 2016

Manganese oxide-induced strategy to high-performance iron/nitrogen/carbon electrocatalysts with highly exposed active sites

Abstract

Iron/nitrogen/carbon (Fe/N/C) catalyst is so far the most promising non-precious metal electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in acidic medium, whose performance depends closely on the synthesis chemistry. Herein, we report a MnOx-induced strategy to construct the Fe/N/C with highly exposed Fe–Nx active sites, which involves the uniform spreading of polyaniline on hierarchical N-doped carbon nanocages by a reactive-template polymerization, followed by the successive iron incorporation and polyaniline pyrolysis. The resulting Fe/N/C demonstrates an excellent ORR performance, including an onset potential of 0.92 V (vs. RHE), four electron selectivity, superb stability and immunity to methanol crossover. The excellent performance is well correlated with the greatly enhanced surface active sites of the catalyst stemming from the unique MnOx-induced strategy. This study provides an efficient approach for exploring the advanced ORR electrocatalysts by increasing the exposed active sites.

Graphical abstract: Manganese oxide-induced strategy to high-performance iron/nitrogen/carbon electrocatalysts with highly exposed active sites

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
28 Jan 2016
Accepted
19 Mar 2016
First published
21 Mar 2016

Nanoscale, 2016,8, 8480-8485

Manganese oxide-induced strategy to high-performance iron/nitrogen/carbon electrocatalysts with highly exposed active sites

T. Sun, Q. Wu, O. Zhuo, Y. Jiang, Y. Bu, L. Yang, X. Wang and Z. Hu, Nanoscale, 2016, 8, 8480 DOI: 10.1039/C6NR00760K

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements