Improving the Catalytic Activity of Metal Complexes and Pyrolyzed Non-Precious Metal-N4 Catalysts for the Reduction of O2

摘要: The massive applications of fuel-cells in daily life has been hampered in part by the high cost of catalytic materials for the O2 cathode that involve noble metals like Pt. MN4 metal macrocyclics [1] and several CuN4 and CuN2 complexes [2] are active for the reduction of O2 but they lack long-term stability in fuel conditions. However, they could useful in disposable air-batteries. Many authors have shown (3-4) that heating MN4 metal macrocyclics together with carbonaceous materials and conducting polymers at temp -eratures as high as 1000 oC produce materials of ill-defined structure but more active and stable. The MNx inner structure is probably retained. It has remained unclear why the heat-treated materials exhibit such high catalytic activity. In many papers (1) we have demonstrated that the catalytic activity of intact MN4 metal complexes is directly linked to the M(III)/(II) formal potential, the more positive the …