The polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the most promising energy conversion technologies today. Non-precious metal based catalysts such as Fe containing nitrogen doped carbons and even metal-free nitrogen doped carbons (NCs) recently attracted a lot of attention due to their low costs, high electrocatalytic activity and long durability at least in alkaline medium.[1,2] We recently employed task-specific ionic liquids as precursors for nitrogen doped carbons being very active catalysts in the oxygen reduction reaction.[3] In this presentation, we show the development to a facile one-pot synthesis of nitrogen doped carbon catalysts either or not containing non-precious metals (Fe or Fe-Co). The obtained electrocatalysts show low overpotential and outstanding high performance as well as good durability in both acidic and alkaline medium. The self-supported and hierarchically porous catalyst systems are essentially �all surface� materials with BET surface areas of up to 2200 m2g-1. Hierarchical transport pore system in combination with the very high catalytically active surface area minimizes kinetic and diffusion limitations, usually hampering catalyst performances. The herein used strategy to obtain such special structures is the use of eutectic inorganic salt melts as reaction medium and template at once. Essentially we tuned our recently reported �salt templating� approach to obtain nitrogen doped carbon aerogels (NCA).[4] In addition to the synthesis methodology the presentation will illustrate structure-property relationships of the interesting electrochemical properties. [1] K. Gong, F. Du, Z. Xia, M. Durstock, L. Dai, Science, 323 (2009) 760-764.[2] M. Lef�vre, E. Proietti, F. Jaouen, J.-P. Dodelet, Science, 324 (2009) 71-74.[3] Yang, W., T. P. Fellinger, M. Antonietti, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 133 (2011) 206-209.[4] Fechler, N., T.P. Fellinger, M. Antonietti, Advanced Materials, 25 (2013) 75-79.

Non-precious metal electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction

247th National Meeting (2014)

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