Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
Open Access
ISSN: 2090-4541
ISSN: 2090-4541
Jinli Qiao and Yuyu Liu
Donghua University, China
Shanghai University, China
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Fundam Renewable Energy App
Faced with the increasingly serious energy crisis, polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells, together with various batteries as clean and efficient power sources, have become the most promising energy conversion devices, which have evoked significant attention during the last decades. Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) both in alkaline solution (i.e., 2H2O + O2 + 4e- ��? 4OH-) and in acidic solution (i.e., 4H+ + O2 + 4e-��?2H2O), significantly affects the electrochemical performances of these technologies. Although a large thermodynamic driving force (E=1.2V RHE) is available, the ORR is kinetically slow even in the presence of Pt-based nobel metal eleccatalysts. In this work, we pioneer the fabrication of heteroatom (N and Fe) co-doped hierarchically porous carbons (N-Fe- HPCs) catalysts for ORR with nitrogen-enriched polyquaternium as the precursor of both N and C source. The obtained N-Fe-HPCs catalysts possess the unique hierarchically porous structure composed of micro-, meso and macro porous with three-dimensional nanoarchitectures, thus leading to a large specific surface area larger than 1000 m2 g-1, which contributes to high exposure of the ORR active sites and excellent transport properties. Besides the perfect ORR performances in PEM fuel cells, such N-Fe- HPCs catalysts can give a discharge peak power density as high as 536 mW cm-2 with a current density of 317 mA cm-2 at 1.0 V of cell voltage and an energy density > 900 Wh kg-1, when used for constructing the zinc��?air battery cathode. The outstanding ORR activity and durability, significantly outperforms the state-of the-art platinum-based catalyst and the most recently reported Zn-air battery in literature.