IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v13y2022i1d10.1038_s41467-022-30702-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Iron atom–cluster interactions increase activity and improve durability in Fe–N–C fuel cells

Author

Listed:
  • Xin Wan

    (Beihang University)

  • Qingtao Liu

    (Beihang University)

  • Jieyuan Liu

    (Beihang University)

  • Shiyuan Liu

    (Beihang University)

  • Xiaofang Liu

    (Beihang University)

  • Lirong Zheng

    (Chinese Academy of Sciences)

  • Jiaxiang Shang

    (Beihang University)

  • Ronghai Yu

    (Beihang University)

  • Jianglan Shui

    (Beihang University)

Abstract

Simultaneously increasing the activity and stability of the single-atom active sites of M–N–C catalysts is critical but remains a great challenge. Here, we report an Fe–N–C catalyst with nitrogen-coordinated iron clusters and closely surrounding Fe–N4 active sites for oxygen reduction reaction in acidic fuel cells. A strong electronic interaction is built between iron clusters and satellite Fe–N4 due to unblocked electron transfer pathways and very short interacting distances. The iron clusters optimize the adsorption strength of oxygen reduction intermediates on Fe–N4 and also shorten the bond amplitude of Fe–N4 with incoherent vibrations. As a result, both the activity and stability of Fe–N4 sites are increased by about 60% in terms of turnover frequency and demetalation resistance. This work shows the great potential of strong electronic interactions between multiphase metal species for improvements of single-atom catalysts.

Suggested Citation

  • Xin Wan & Qingtao Liu & Jieyuan Liu & Shiyuan Liu & Xiaofang Liu & Lirong Zheng & Jiaxiang Shang & Ronghai Yu & Jianglan Shui, 2022. "Iron atom–cluster interactions increase activity and improve durability in Fe–N–C fuel cells," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30702-z
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30702-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30702-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-022-30702-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kara Strickland & Elise Miner & Qingying Jia & Urszula Tylus & Nagappan Ramaswamy & Wentao Liang & Moulay-Tahar Sougrati & Frédéric Jaouen & Sanjeev Mukerjee, 2015. "Highly active oxygen reduction non-platinum group metal electrocatalyst without direct metal–nitrogen coordination," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 1-8, November.
    2. Daniel Malko & Anthony Kucernak & Thiago Lopes, 2016. "In situ electrochemical quantification of active sites in Fe–N/C non-precious metal catalysts," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-7, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Deyou Yu & Licong Xu & Kaixing Fu & Xia Liu & Shanli Wang & Minghua Wu & Wangyang Lu & Chunyu Lv & Jinming Luo, 2024. "Electronic structure modulation of iron sites with fluorine coordination enables ultra-effective H2O2 activation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.
    2. Shuo Zhang & Jianghua Wu & Mengting Zheng & Xin Jin & Zihan Shen & Zhonghua Li & Yanjun Wang & Quan Wang & Xuebin Wang & Hui Wei & Jiangwei Zhang & Peng Wang & Shanqing Zhang & Liyan Yu & Lifeng Dong , 2023. "Fe/Cu diatomic catalysts for electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    3. Cai Wang & Xiaoyu Wang & Houan Ren & Yilin Zhang & Xiaomei Zhou & Jing Wang & Qingxin Guan & Yuping Liu & Wei Li, 2023. "Combining Fe nanoparticles and pyrrole-type Fe-N4 sites on less-oxygenated carbon supports for electrochemical CO2 reduction," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    4. Shan, Pengyue & Bai, Xue & Jiang, Qi & Chen, Yunjian & Lu, Sen & Song, Pei & Jia, Zepeng & Xiao, Taiyang & Han, Yang & Wang, Yazhou & Liu, Tong & Cui, Hong & Feng, Rong & Kang, Qin & Liang, Zhiyong & , 2023. "Bilayer MN4-O-MN4 by bridge-bonded oxygen ligands: Machine learning to accelerate the design of bifunctional electrocatalysts," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 445-454.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shuhu Yin & Hongyuan Yi & Mengli Liu & Jian Yang & Shuangli Yang & Bin-Wei Zhang & Long Chen & Xiaoyang Cheng & Huan Huang & Rui Huang & Yanxia Jiang & Honggang Liao & Shigang Sun, 2024. "An in situ exploration of how Fe/N/C oxygen reduction catalysts evolve during synthesis under pyrolytic conditions," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Shuhu Yin & Long Chen & Jian Yang & Xiaoyang Cheng & Hongbin Zeng & Yuhao Hong & Huan Huang & Xiaoxiao Kuai & Yangu Lin & Rui Huang & Yanxia Jiang & Shigang Sun, 2024. "A Fe-NC electrocatalyst boosted by trace bromide ions with high performance in proton exchange membrane fuel cells," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    3. Jinfa Chang & Guanzhi Wang & Xiaoxia Chang & Zhenzhong Yang & Han Wang & Boyang Li & Wei Zhang & Libor Kovarik & Yingge Du & Nina Orlovskaya & Bingjun Xu & Guofeng Wang & Yang Yang, 2023. "Interface synergism and engineering of Pd/Co@N-C for direct ethanol fuel cells," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, December.
    4. Yaqoob, Lubna & Noor, Tayyaba & Iqbal, Naseem & Nasir, Habib & Sohail, Manzar & Zaman, Neelam & Usman, Muhammad, 2020. "Nanocomposites of cobalt benzene tricarboxylic acid MOF with rGO: An efficient and robust electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER)," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 1040-1054.
    5. Beltrán, Diana E. & Ding, Shuo & Xu, Hui & Wu, Gang & Litster, Shawn, 2023. "Air Contamination of Platinum-Group Metal-free Fuel Cell Cathodes with Atomically Dispersed Iron Active Sites," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 349(C).
    6. Zhe Jiang & Xuerui Liu & Xiao-Zhi Liu & Shuang Huang & Ying Liu & Ze-Cheng Yao & Yun Zhang & Qing-Hua Zhang & Lin Gu & Li-Rong Zheng & Li Li & Jianan Zhang & Youjun Fan & Tang Tang & Zhongbin Zhuang &, 2023. "Interfacial assembly of binary atomic metal-Nx sites for high-performance energy devices," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-12, December.
    7. Lin, P.Z. & Sun, J. & He, C.X. & Wu, M.C. & Zhao, T.S., 2024. "Modeling proton exchange membrane fuel cells with platinum-group-metal-free catalysts," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 360(C).
    8. Ratso, Sander & Zitolo, Andrea & Käärik, Maike & Merisalu, Maido & Kikas, Arvo & Kisand, Vambola & Rähn, Mihkel & Paiste, Päärn & Leis, Jaan & Sammelselg, Väino & Holdcroft, Steven & Jaouen, Frédéric , 2021. "Non-precious metal cathodes for anion exchange membrane fuel cells from ball-milled iron and nitrogen doped carbide-derived carbons," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 800-810.
    9. Lopes, Thiago & Beruski, Otavio & Manthanwar, Amit M. & Korkischko, Ivan & Pugliesi, Reynaldo & Stanojev, Marco Antonio & Andrade, Marcos Leandro Garcia & Pistikopoulos, Efstratios N. & Perez, Joelma , 2019. "Spatially resolved oxygen reaction, water, and temperature distribution: Experimental results as a function of flow field and implications for polymer electrolyte fuel cell operation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 252(C), pages 1-1.
    10. Jie-Wei Chen & Zisheng Zhang & Hui-Min Yan & Guang-Jie Xia & Hao Cao & Yang-Gang Wang, 2022. "Pseudo-adsorption and long-range redox coupling during oxygen reduction reaction on single atom electrocatalyst," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30702-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.