Bulk Production of N, Fe-Doped Carbon with High Surface Area and Big Pore Volume and Its Excellent Activity for Oxygen Reduction in Acidic Media

Exploring the nonprecious metal catalysts for oxygen reduction with high activity and stability in acidic media is still a hard but extremely desirable work. Here, we proposed a bulk production of N, Fe-doped carbon nanospheres. The process involved a hydrothermal polymerization of m-phenylenediamine with FeCl3 as catalysts to catalyze the formation of poly(m-phenylenediamine) and annealing in NH3 atmosphere. The typical product has high surface area (1408 m2 g−1), big total pore volume (0.90 cm3 g−1) and a number of micropores. The typical product possesses the excellent activity for ORR, endurance and tolerance to methanol in acidic circumstance. This work has the merits of careful selection of poly(m-phenylenediamine) as precursor and NH3 etching to prepare the high-performance ORR catalysts in acidic electrolyte. The approach is simple, low-cost and readily scalable.