The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is one of the most important electrochemical reactions which are widely applied in fuel cells, metal-air batteries, chlor-alkali industry and corrosions. However, the sluggish kinetics of the ORR resulted from the high overpotential, complicated process and small exchange current density limit the practical applications, thus introducing certain kind of electrocatalyst is crucial. A well-designed support material for the electrocatalysts should acquire certain kinds of characteristic properties such as suitable specific surface area and surface chemistry, high conductivity, high stability, as well as an accessible porosity. Aiming at fabricating a well-designed support material for the ORR electrocatalyst, our group obtained a novel kind of hierarchical porous carbon (HPC) doped by nitrogen atoms from food waste, such as fish scales and animal bones.<br/>The HPC shows a three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical lamellar porous structure, and well-developed open macropores interconnected with each other. Such unique structure of the HPC derived from the sintering of collagen fibers by using inorganic components served as hard template and collagen fibers served as carbon source as well as soft template. As indicated by the XPS results, some of the nitrogen atoms from the proteoglycan of the precursors insert into the carbon framework to form the pyrrolic-like structures mainly through the defects of aromatic rings during the carbonization. When applied for the support materials of the ORR electrocatalysts, the HPC supported Pt electrocatalyst exhibits larger electrochemical surface area and better catalytic properties in terms of both on-set potential and current density compared with Pt/Vulcan XC-72. The Low cost production, well-developed pore structures and unique properties of the HPC make it a promising support material for the ORR electrocatalysts.

Nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon fabricated from food waste as the support material for Pt electrocatalyst toward the oxygen reduction reaction

249th National Meeting (2015)

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