Authors: Eileen Hao Yu Shaoan Cheng Bruce E Logan Keith Scott
Publish Date: 2008/11/12
Volume: 39, Issue: 5, Pages: 705-711
Abstract
Recent interest in electricity production using microbial fuel cells makes it important to better understand O2 reduction in neutral solutions with nonprecious metal catalysts Higher O2 reduction activity was obtained using iron phthalocyanine supported on Ketjen black carbon FePcKJB than with a platinum catalyst in neutral pH At low overpotentials a Tafel slope close to −006 V/dec in both acid and neutral pH suggested that the mechanism of O2 reduction on FePc is not changed with the change of pH and the reaction is mainly controlled by FeII/FeIII redox couple This behaviour gives us new insight into catalysis using FePc and further supports the use of FePc as a promising catalyst for the oxygen reduction applications in neutral mediaThis research was supported by an EPSRC research fellowship Grant EP/C535456/1 for E H Yu National Science Foundation Grants BES0401885 and CBET0730359 and the European Union for Transfer of Knowledge award on biological fuel cells contract MTKDCT2004517215
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