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Construction of Highly Active Metal-Containing Nanoparticles and FeCo-N4 Composite Sites for the Acidic Oxygen Reduction Reaction |
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| Authors: | Shu-Hu Yin Jian Yang Yu Han Gen Li Li-Yang Wan You-Hu Chen Chi Chen Xi-Ming Qu Prof. Yan-Xia Jiang Prof. Shi-Gang Sun |
| Affiliation: | 1. State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Collaborative innovation center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005 P. R. China These authors contributed equally to this work.;2. State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Collaborative innovation center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005 P. R. China;3. Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201210 P. R. China |
| Abstract: | Metal-containing nanoparticles (M-NPs) in metal/nitrogen-doped carbon (M-N-C) catalysts have been considered hostile to the acidic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The relation between M-NPs and the active sites of metal coordinated with nitrogen (MNx) is hard to establish in acid medium owing to the poor stability of M-NPs. Herein, we develop a strategy to successfully construct a new FeCo-N-C catalyst containing highly active M-NPs and MN4 composite sites (M/FeCo-SAs-N-C). Enhanced catalytic activity and stability of M/FeCo-SAs-N-C is shown experimentally. Calculations reveal that there is a strong interaction between M-NPs and FeN4 sites, which can favor ORR by activating the O−O bond, thus facilitating a direct 4 e− process. Those findings firstly shed light on the highly active M-NPs and FeN4 composite sites for catalyzing acid oxygen reduction reaction, and the relevant reaction mechanism is suggested. |
| Keywords: | composite sites metal-N-C nanoparticles non-precious metals oxygen reduction reaction |