@article{Sang2025, 
author = {Wei Sang and Somboon Chaemchuen and Longyang Zhang and Zechen Wang and Xingchuan Li and Cocoro Andrew Nagasaka and Mo Xiong and Naoki Ogiwara and Cheng Chen and Zhao Wang and Jian Zhang and Francis Verpoort and Shichun Mu and Zongkui Kou and Tingting Wang},
title = {Solid-state stepwise temperature-programmable synthesis of bioinspired Fe-N-C oxygen reduction electrocatalyst featuring Fe-N5 configuration},
year = {2025},
journal = {Nano Research},
volume = {18},
number = {3},
pages = {94907245},
keywords = {oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), single atom catalysts, solvent-free synthesis, metal-air battery, Fe-N5 coordination},
url = {https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.26599/NR.2025.94907245},
doi = {10.26599/NR.2025.94907245},
abstract = {The bioinspired Fe-N-C features an asymmetric Fe-N5 configuration to produce active metal-oxygen intermediates by introducing axial N ligand into a symmetric Fe-N4 structure, enabling highly active oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). However, the artificial creation of active Fe-N5 configuration with a direct, facile and green method has been rarely developed yet, as current techniques involve complex processes and costly precursors. Herein, we advance a novel solid-state stepwise temperature-programmable (SST) route to directly produce bioinspired Fe-N5-C. We then demonstrate that such a Fe-N5-C exhibits a quite higher half-wave potential (0.92 V) with 22-fold faster ORR kinetics (15.6 mA·cm−2 @ 0.85 V) over that of the commercial Pt/C counterpart. Indeed, we perform density functional theory (DFT) to find that the Fe is discharged with an extra 0.1 e− through the axially coordinate N ligand, which significantly enhances the ability to activate O2 and enables an easier desorption of the crucial intermediate *OH on the Fe-N5 configuration over the conventional Fe-N4 structure.}
}