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Electrospun Fe2C-loaded carbon nanofibers as efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction

journal contribution
posted on 2019-04-09, 00:00 authored by Yangxiu Liu, Tuanfeng Li, Xueyuan Cao, Jingjun Liu, Jane Zhang, Jin Jia, Feng Wang, Kai Pan
Carbon-based non-precious metal catalysts have been regarded as the most promising alternatives to the state-of-art Pt/C catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). However, there are still some unresolved challenges such as agglomeration of nanoparticles, complex preparation process and low production efficiency, which severely hamper the large-scale production of non-precious metal catalysts. Herein, a novel carbon-based non-precious metal catalyst, i.e. iron carbide nanoparticles embedded on carbon nanofibers (Fe2C/CNFs), prepared via the direct pyrolysis of carbon- and iron-containing Janus fibrous precursors obtained by electrospinning. The Fe2C/CNF catalyst shows uniform dispersion and narrow size distribution of Fe2C nanoparticles embedded on the CNFs. The obtained catalyst exhibits positive onset potential (0.87 V versus RHE), large kinetic current density (1.9 mA cm-2), and nearly follows the effective four-electron route, suggesting an outstanding electrocatalytic activity for the ORR in 0.1 M of KOH solution. Besides, its stability is better than that of the commercial Pt/C catalyst, due to the strong binding force between Fe2C particles and CNFs. This strategy opens new avenues for the design and efficient production of promising electrocatalysts for the ORR.

History

Journal

Nanotechnology

Volume

30

Issue

32

Article number

325403

Pagination

1 - 8

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Location

Bristol, Eng.

eISSN

1361-6528

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2019, IOP Publishing Ltd