Nitrogen and Sulfur Enriched Porous Carbon Materials with Trace Fe Derived from Hyper‐Crosslinked Polymer as an Efficient Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalyst

Abstract

Exploring and designing a non‐precious metal‐based electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reactions with high efficiency is imperative for commercializing fuel cell technology. In the present work, an approach to synthesize N, and S ‐doped porous carbon catalysts with trace Fe derived from N, S enriched hyper‐crosslinked polymer for ORR by ZnCl2 activation at high temperature is described. The optimized catalyst (HCP‐NSZn‐900) exhibited an impressive catalytic activity towards ORR due to its high surface area, excellent porosity, and effective doping of Fe and heteroatoms. Accordingly, HCP‐NSZn‐900 demonstrates a high onset potential of 0.98 V (vs. RHE) with a large diffusion‐limited current density of 4.72 mA cm−2, and improved tolerance to methanol crossover, significantly longer durability in contrast to the Pt/C catalyst. Furthermore, HCP‐NSZn‐900 confirmed the 4‐electron transfer selectivity (n∼4.0). Therefore, the synthesized materials could be a potential replacement for Pt/C catalyst for energy conversion technologies.