Vitalizing fuel cells with vitamins: pyrolyzed vitamin B12 as a non-precious catalyst for enhanced oxygen reduction reaction of polymer electrolyte fuel cells

Abstract

The limited natural abundance and high cost of Pt has been a major barrier in its applications for hydrogen or methanol fuel cells. In this work, based on the pyrolyzed corrin structure of vitamin B12 (py-B12/C), it is reported to produce superior catalytic activity in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) with an electron transfer number of 3.90, which is very close to the ideal case of 4. The H₂–O₂fuel cell using py-B12/C provides a maximum power density of 370 mW cm⁻² and a current density of 0.720 A cm⁻² at 0.5 V at 70 °C. Calculations based on density functional theory suggests that the corrin complex with a low-symmetric structure offers a much preferable path for the ORR, which is not applicable to the porphyrin with a high-symmetric structure. The long-term stability and high ORR activity of py-B12/C make it a viable candidate as a Pt-substitute in the ORR.