Earth abundant catalysts free from platinum group metal (PGM) have been developed extensively for the use in polymer electrolyte fuel cell cathodes. Only one type of non-PGM catalyst, so-called Fe/N/C, has shown promising initial activity and the most researchers in non-PGM catalyst community have focused on this catalyst type.1 Another non-PGM catalyst type, oxide/oxynitride containing group IV or V metals has attracted less attention compared with Fe/N/C in this field.2 The advantage of this catalyst type is the chemical stability whereas the disadvantages were the moderate activity and low conductivity. Recently, the single cell performance of zirconium oxynitride was boosted to be comparable to that of state-of-the-art Fe/N/C catalysts,3 to attract the attention of pioneers of Fe/N/C.4 However, the performance was not stable even when the cell voltage was maintained below 1 V.3 The source of the degradation and the most recent progress on titanium oxynitride catalysts5 to overcome those issues will be presented at the meeting.

Group IV metal oxynitride catalysts for polymer electrolyte fuel cells cathodes

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.