The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) plays an important role in proton exchange fuel cells (PEFCs). In PEFCs, ORR is the cathodic half-cell reaction complementary to the oxidation of the fuel, but since ORR has slow kinetics, it requires high amounts of catalyst. State-of-the-art ORR catalysts are based on the expensive metal platinum. Even though the amount of platinum needed for ORR in PEFCs has been reduced significantly over the last decade, it is still the major contributor to the cost of PEFCs, thus hindering the commercialization and accessibility of this technology.[1]

Iron and nitrogen doped carbon (Fe-N-C) catalysts have gained a lot of research attention due to their high ORR activity, which makes them potential substitutes for platinum-based catalysts. In Fe-N-C catalysts, iron is thought to be atomically dispersed as pseudo-molecular active centres with four- or fivefold nitrogen coordination spheres which are embedded in graphene layers. Since Fe-N-C catalysts are typically prepared via pyrolysis, they have a highly amorphous structure and can contain multiple iron phases, which makes them difficult to characterize structurally and spectroscopically. Consequently, there is still a scientific debate on the exact nature of the active site, in terms of iron spin and oxidation states and its precise coordination environment.[2-4]

Fe-57 Mössbauer spectroscopy can provide direct insights on iron spin and oxidation states and is used successfully to characterise the amorphous Fe-N-C catalysts. Until recently, the interpretation of Mössbauer spectra was limited to comparisons with small reference complexes which lack the extended π-systems of Fe-N-C catalysts.[2] Since synthesis of such extended π-systems as references is difficult, we have developed a library of computational models that encompasses different structural motifs and electronic structures. With increasing use of in situ and operando experiments on Fe-N-C catalysts, the interest in computational models for the interpretation of experimental Mössbauer spectra has grown.[4-6] In this contribution, we present our density functional theory results for different molecular Fe-N-C models with extended π-systems and discuss their electronic structures and spectroscopic properties.

[1] L. Osmieri, et al. Current Opinion in Electrochemistry 2021, 25, 100627.

[2] U. I. Kramm, et al. Advanced Materials 2019, 31, 1805623.

[3] S. Wagner, et al. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2019, 58, 10486.

[4] L. Ni, C. Gallenkamp, et al. Advanced Energy & Sustainability Research 2021, 2, 2000064.

[5] J. Li, et al. Nature Catalysis, 2021, 4, 10.

[6] X. Liu, et al. Chem 2020, 6, 3440.