Preparation and study of tungsten carbide catalyst synergistically codoped with Fe and nitrogen for oxygen reduction reaction

Recent research on the oxygen reduction reaction in has mainly focused on the design and synthesis of non-noble metal catalysts to overcome the cost limitations of precious metals that have a high catalytic activity. The catalytic activity of non-noble metal catalysts has been greatly improved over a large number of studies in the field, but there is still no obvious advantage over precious metal catalysts. In this work, an electrocatalyst with high limiting current density for the oxygen reduction reaction was successfully prepared by codoping a tungsten carbide matrix with Fe and N. The performance of the catalyst was characterized by various physical and electrochemical techniques. The limiting current density in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) can reach 6.644 mA cm−2, and the catalyst also has good half-wave and onset potentials. In addition to the excellent stability and methanol tolerance of the cathode process under alkaline conditions, the catalyst also exhibited the four-electron transfer mechanism as well as good ORR kinetics, and the yield of H2O2 was close to 0. This catalyst with its excellent properties is of significance in guiding research on non-noble metal catalysts with comparable performance to traditional noble metal catalysts.