Research PaperSoft-template synthesis of mesoporous non-precious metal catalyst with Fe-Nx/C active sites for oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells

•Mesoporous Fe/N/C catalyst with Fe-Nx/C site is made by soft-template method.•Fe-Nx/C catalytic site shows high kinetic activity for oxygen reduction reaction.•Large mesopores facilitate mass transport in cathode during fuel cell operation.

We synthesized ordered mesoporous Fe/N/C with highly active Fe-Nx/C sites denoted as m-FePhen-C as a non-precious metal catalyst (NPMC) for the oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells. This was the first study that incorporated a catalyst precursor with Fe-N coordination directly in a simple block co-polymer-assisted soft-template method for the synthesis of mesoporous Fe/N/C. The synthesized catalyst (m-FePhen-C) showed a high catalytic performance comparable to that of Pt/C in half-cell tests, and a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) with an m-FePhen-C cathode exhibited 40% higher power density than did an MEA with a commercial Pt/C cathode in single-cell tests, with comparable electrode thicknesses. This result is highly meaningful in that generation of the Fe-Nx/C active sites and formation of ordered mesoporous structure were achieved simultaneously in the simple soft-template-assisted process, and in that the advantages of mesoporous structure with appropriate pore size in metal-containing NPMC were elucidated for high-performance MEAs.

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