High Performance Heteroatoms Quaternary-doped Carbon Catalysts Derived from Shewanella Bacteria for Oxygen Reduction

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 17064
• Main Authors: Guo, Zhaoyan, Ren, Guangyuan, Jiang, Congcong, Lu, Xianyong, Zhu, Ying, Jiang, Lei, Dai, Liming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 25-11-2015; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 140/133; 639/301/161; 639/638/161/893; Carbon - chemistry; Catalysis; Electrochemical Techniques; Hot Temperature; Humanities and Social Sciences; Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; multidisciplinary; Oxidation-Reduction; Oxygen - chemistry; Oxygen - metabolism; Porosity; Science; Shewanella - chemistry; Shewanella - metabolism; Spectrometry, X-Ray Emission
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep17064

A novel heteroatoms (N, P, S and Fe) quaternary-doped carbon (HQDC-X, X refers to the pyrolysis temperature) can be fabricated by directly pyrolyzing a gram-negative bacteria,
S. oneidensis
MR-1 as precursors at 800 °C, 900 °C and 1000 °C under argon atmosphere. These HQDC-X catalysts maintain the cylindrical shape of bacteria after pyrolysis under high temperatures, while heteroatoms including N, P, S and Fe distribute homogeneously on the carbon frameworks. As a result, HQDC-X catalysts exhibit excellent electrocatalytic activity for ORR via a dominant four-electron oxygen reduction pathway in alkaline medium, which is comparable with that of commercial Pt/C. More importantly, HQDC-X catalysts show better tolerance for methanol crossover and CO poisoning effects, long-term durability than commercial Pt/C, which could be promising alternatives to costly Pt-based electrocatalysts for ORR. The method may provide a promising avenue to develop cheap ORR catalysts from inexpensive, scalable and biological recursors.