The progress of fuel cell technologies lies in the development of a low-cost and efficient catalyst that can undergo oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). It is important to understand the catalyst and electrolyte interfaces and the vital role they play during then ORR reaction. In-situ characterization of such buried interfaces remains a major obstacle, however, recent advancement in X-ray spectroscopy techniques has allowed us to probe these interfaces and gain insight to its catalytic mechanism. Herein we demonstrate a novel strategy to probe our non-noble catalyst in pyrolyzed B12 with the electrolyte interfaces by combining soft X-ray and hard X-ray spectroscopy with electrochemical impedance measurement. The combination of these techniques allowed us to study the real situation of catalyst/electrolyte interfaces and obtain detailed local structure information by specifically looking into the metal-nitrogen/oxygen bond distances which indicate subtle, element-specific oxidation and reduction trends. These results demonstrate a powerful evidence of proving how the O<sub>2</sub> interacts onto the electrocatalyst during ORR.

In-operando x-ray spectroscopic insight into biomimetic fuel cell electrocatalyst

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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