Highly efficient electrocatalysts derived from carbon black supported non-precious metal macrocycle catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction

For the sake of accelerating the commercial application of fuel cells, non-noble metal catalysts with high activity and high stability have been widely developed to replace platinum-based catalysts. Here, we report a simple but cost-effective synthetic strategy using iron tetra-amino phthalocyanine (FePC-NH2 ) and modified carbon black (HCB) to obtain a novel oxygen reduction electrocatalyst (named as FePC-NH2/HCB-800) with Fe2O3 wrapped in nitrogen-doped carbon (N-carbon) as active site. The HCB as tem-plate can effectively promotes the formation of Fe2O3 active site in the catalysts. Compared to commercial Pt/C catalyst, the FePC-NH2/HCB-800 catalyst exhibits high electrocatalytic activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) with onset potential of 0.98V and half-wave potential with 0.84V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE). Meanwhile, the catalyst also shows excellent circulation stability. We believe that this work provides a platform for ORR and is conducive to the commercialization of fuel cells and metal-air batteries. (C) 2018 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science Press. All rights reserved.