Boosting the Performance of Iron-Phthalocyanine as Cathode Electrocatalyst for Alkaline Polymer Fuel Cells Through Edge-Closed Conjugation

One-pot microwave conjugation results in a polymerized iron-phthalocyanine (pFePc) which exhibits extremely high ORR performance,, showing activity much better than that of the FePc monomer and 20 wt % Pt/C, and similar to that of the 60 wt % Pt/C under the same catalyst loading. Furthermore, we proposed an edge-closing strategy to significantly enhance the stability of the pFePc catalyst in alkaline media by eliminating the edge anhydride groups. Using the edge-closed pFePc as cathode catalyst in APFC, a power density as high as 452 mW∙cm^-2 is achieved, which is among the best performance of non-noble metal catalyst-based APFCs so far reported.