Journal of Energy Chemistry

Journal of Energy Chemistry ›› 2022, Vol. 69 ›› Issue (6): 466-489.DOI: 10.1016/j.jechem.2022.01.035

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Recent insights on iron based nanostructured electrocatalyst and current status of proton exchange membrane fuel cell for sustainable transport

Mohamedazeem M. Mohideena, Adiyodi Veettil Radhamanib, Seeram Ramakrishnac, Yen Weid,*, Yong Liua,*   

  1. aBeijing Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Composites, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China;
    bDepartment of Physics and Nanotechnology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur 603203, India;
    cCenter for Nanofibers and Nanotechnology, National University of Singapore, Singapore 1157, Singapore;
    dDepartment of Chemistry, Key Lab of Bioorganic Phosphorus Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
  • Received:2021-09-03 Revised:2022-01-17 Accepted:2022-01-22 Online:2022-06-15 Published:2022-10-25
  • Contact: * E-mail addresses: weiyen@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn (Y. Wei), yongliu@mail.buct.edu.cn (Y. Liu).
  • About author:Mohamedazeem M. Mohideen is presently pursuing his doctoral degree under the guidance of Prof Yong Liu at Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China. He finished his Master’s in materials science at Anna university, Chennai, India, and his M.Sc dissertation work is focused on the application of quantum dots. Presently his area of research at BUCT is focused on the development of non-precious electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction on the application of proton exchange membrane fuel cell.
    Dr. Adiyodi Veettil Radhamani received her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, in 2017. She completed her post-doctoral research fellow at the center for nanofibers and nanotechnology at the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 2017 to 2020. Currently, she is an assistant professor at SRM University, India. Her research interests include energy storage materials, fabrication of energy storage devices, metal nanocomposites, carbon capture-utilization and storage (CCUS), etc.
    Professor Seeram Ramakrishna, FREng, is the Chair of Circular Economy Taskforce at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also the Director of Center for Nanotechnology and Sustainability. He is an elected Fellow of major professional societies and academies in Singapore, UK, India, and USA. He is named among the World’s Most Influential Minds and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science & cross-fields by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics, respectively. He has co-authored 1,000 journal papers and 10 authored books. He received ~115,000 citations and an h-index of 159. His research interests include innovations in sustainable materials and the evaluation of circularity by life cycle assessment.
    Professor Yen Wei, is a chair professor of chemistry at Tsinghua University and an internationally renowned material chemist. He received his undergraduate and master from Peking University (1977-81) and he obtained his doctoral degree from the City University of New York (1986). After postdoctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1986-87), he joined as an assistant professor at Drexel University (1987), and became a DuPont named associate professor (1991), a full professor (1995) and a Wagner Chair Professor (2004). He has won the titles of national outstanding youth (1998), outstanding overseas scholar of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2003), and lecture professor of Changjiang Scholars of the Ministry of Education (2005). As the highest level talent introduced by the country, he joined Tsinghua full-time at the end of 2009, and his current research focuses on nano polymer materials and biomedicine, energy, water treatment, cellulose, and 3D printing technology. He has published 1165 papers (cited more than 45800 times, h index 108). In 2018, he was employed as a key scientist of the ‘‘molecular aggregation luminescence” center of the national foundation of China. From 2014 to 2020, he is listed as one of the highly cited scientists in the world.
    Professor Yong Liu is Head of the Polymeric Nano Composite Lab and associate professor at the College of Materials Science and Engineering at Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT). His research interest focused on preparing ultrafine nanofibers by electrospinning on the application of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell’s membrane electrode assembly, electrodes, and electrocatalyst. Dr. Liu is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a senior member of the Chinese Society for Composite Materials, a member of the American Chemical Society, and a member of the Chinese Chemical Society. The State Council awarded him the National Award for Science and Technology Progress for his contribution to polymer materials.

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Abstract: Bridging the performance gap of the electrocatalyst between the rotating disk electrode (RDE) and mem-brane electrode assembly (MEA) level testing is the key to reducing the total cost of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) vehicles. Presently, platinum metal accounts for ~42% of the total cost of the PEMFC vehicles for usage in the cathode catalyst layer, where the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) occurs. An alternative to the platinum catalyst, the Fe-N-C catalyst has attracted considerable interest for PEMFC due to its cost-effectiveness and high catalytic activity towards ORR. However, the excellent ORR activity of Fe-N-C obtained from RDE studies rarely translates the same performance into MEA operating conditions. Such a performance gap is mainly attributed to the lack of atomic-level under-standing of Fe-N-C active sites and their ORR mechanism. Besides, unless the cost of expensive electro-catalyst is reduced, the total operation cost of the PEMFC vehicles remains constant. Therefore, developing highly efficient Fe-N-C catalysts from academic and industrial perspectives is critical for com-mercializing PEMFC vehicles. Here, the scope of the review is three-fold. First, we discussed the atomic-level insights of Fe-N-C active sites and ORR mechanism, followed by unraveling the different iron-based nanostructured ORR electrocatalysts, including oxide, carbide, nitride, phosphide, sulfide, and single-atom catalysts. And then we bridged their ORR catalytic performance gap between the RDE and MEA tests for real operating conditions of PEMFC vehicles. Second, we focused on bridging the cost barriers of PEMFC vehicles between capital, operation, and end-user. Finally, we provided the path to achieve sus-tainable development goals by commercializing PEMFC vehicles for a better world.

Key words: Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), Active sites, Iron-based nanostructure, Sustainable development goals