With recent development in anion-exchange membrane fuel cells, substantial work has been carried out in developing novel non-noble metal catalysts (NNMC) for ORR. As known, Me/N/C (Me = Fe, Co, Ni) is a class of non noble metal catalyst with good activity which has been extensively studied, while the active site is still controversial. Usually, the highly active NNMCs have been prepared by subjecting carbon supported nitrogen-metal chelates or nitrogen-containing organic compound-modified carbon black to a treatment combination of pyrolysis, metal leaching, and re-pyrolysis. However, the active sites of such kind of electrocatalysts are still undiscovered. A simple but novel route to prepare NNMC is in need to be developed. In addition, we may have some insight into the active sites by different synthesis routes.In this work, we prepared a series of carbon-supported CoOx electrocatalysts through a facile solvothermal route. First, we pretreated the carbon black in 5M HNO3 then followed by exposing the carbon black in NH3 atmosphere via the solvothermal route to further modify its surface. Thereafter, nano CoOx was precipitated on the carbon support.The as-prepared CoOx nanoparticles were uniformly supported on the modified carbon support. The particle size was about 2nm from TEM .The XRD patterns show abroad diffraction peaks adding difficulties in determining the crystalline phase of the CoOx. The half wave potential of the ORR over the optimal CoOx/C is around 100 mV negative compared with a commercial Pt/C . Nevertheless, the CoOx/C is a promising NNMC for the ORR. The mechanism of the ORR on the CoOx/C catalysts is under study.AcknowledgementsThis work was supported by the Hi-Tech R&D Program of China (2011AA050705), National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB215500), the 100-Talent Program and the External Cooperation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. GJHZ1135).

Preparing carbon-supported cobalt oxide catalyst for oxygen reduction reaction by a facile solvothermal route

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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