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Non-precious metal catalysts (NPMCs) are promising low-cost alternatives of Pt/C for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which however suffer from serious stability challenge in the devices of proton-exchange-membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). Different from the traditional strategies of increasing the degree of graphitization of carbon substrates and using less Fenton-reactive metals, we prove here that proper regulation of coordination anions is also an effective way to improve the stability of NPMC. N/P co-coordinated Fe-Co dual-atomic-sites are constructed on ZIF-8 derived carbon support using a molecular precursor of C34H28Cl2CoFeP2 and a “precursor-preselected” method. A composition of FeCoN5P1 is infered for the dual-atom active site by microscopy and spectroscopy analysis. By comparing with N-coordinated references, we investigate the effect of P-coodination on the ORR catalysis of Fe-Co dual-atom catalysts in PEMFC. The metals in FeCoN5P1 have the lower formation energy than those in the solo N-coordinated active sites of FeCoN6 and FeN4, and exhibits a much better fuel cell stability. This anion approach provides a new way to improve the stability of dual-atom catalysts.

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 12 October 2021
Revised: 26 October 2021
Accepted: 28 October 2021
Published: 29 November 2021
Issue date: April 2022

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality (No. Z200012) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21975010).

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