Interface engineering of plasmonic induced Fe/N/C-F catalyst with enhanced oxygen catalysis performance for fuel cells application
Xue Yin, Ligang Feng, Wen Yang, Yuanxi Zhang, Haiyan Wu, Le Yang, Lei Zhou, Lin Gan, Shaorui Sun
Abstract
The low intrinsic activity of Fe/N/C oxygen catalysts restricts their commercial application in the fuel cells technique; herein, we demonstrated the interface engineering of plasmonic induced Fe/N/C-F catalyst with primarily enhanced oxygen reduction performance for fuel cells applications. The strong interaction between F and Fe-N4 active sites modifies the catalyst interfacial properties as revealed by X-ray absorption structure spectrum and density functional theory calculations, which changes the electronic structure of Fe-N active site resulting from more atoms around the active site participating in the reaction as well as super-hydrophobicity from C-F covalent bond. The hybrid contribution from active sites and carbon support is proposed to optimize the three-phase microenvironment efficiently in the catalysis electrode, thereby facilitating efficient oxygen reduction performance. High catalytic performance for oxygen reduction and fuel cells practical application catalyzed by Fe/N/C-F catalyst is thus verified, which offers a novel catalyst system for fuel cells technique.