Single-Atom Iron Catalysts on Overhang-Eave Carbon Cages for High-Performance Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Single-atom catalysts have drawn great attention, especially in electrocatalysis. However, most of previous works focus on the enhanced catalytic properties via improving metal loading. Engineering morphologies of catalysts to facilitate mass transport through catalyst layers, thus increasing the utilization of each active site, is regarded as an appealing way for enhanced performance. Herein, we design an overhang-eave structure decorated with isolated single-atom iron sites via a silica-mediated MOF-templated approach for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysis. This catalyst demonstrates superior ORR performance in both alkaline and acidic electrolytes, comparable to the state-of-the-art Pt/C catalyst and superior to most precious-metal-free catalysts reported to date. This activity originates from its edge-rich structure, having more three-phase boundaries with enhanced mass transport of reactants to accessible single-atom iron sites (increasing the utilization of active sites), which verifies the practicability of such a synthetic approach.