ORR performance of the catalysts was investigated in N
2 or O
2 saturated 0.1 mol/L KOH. As shown in Fig. S8 (Supporting information), no peak was detected in the CV curves of Mn-N-P-C under N
2 saturation solution. On the contrary, an obvious reduction peak at 0.78 V
vs. RHE was observed for 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalyst in O
2-saturated solutions, suggesting ORR process was conducted over the catalysts in the presence of O
2. Additionally, the reduction peak of 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalyst present a positive shift of 60 mV compared to the N-P doped carbon catalyst (Fig. S8 in Supporting information), which indicated the introduction of Mn can enhance the ORR performance.
Fig. 3a showed the LSV curves of the N-P, Mn-N-P-C and commercial Pt/C catalysts at the rotation rate of 1600 rpm. As expected, compared to the N-P doped sample, the limiting current density and half-wave potential were improved obviously after the introduction of Mn. The 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalyst showed a limiting current density of 5.2 mA/cm
2 with a half-wave potential of 0.82 V
vs. RHE, which was the highest ORR catalytic activity compared to other Mn-N-P and N-P doped carbon catalysts. Moreover, 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalyst showed comparable ORR performance with commercial Pt/C catalysts and a higher ORR performance to some recently-reported Metal-N-P doped carbon catalysts (Table S3 in Supporting information). According to the above results, the N, P co-doped samples have poor ORR activity [
50]. In comparation, after introduction Mn element in those samples, the ORR performance has a significant improvement. It can be concluded that the introduction of Mn could increase the intrinsic active sites of the catalysts, which led to a lower over-potential and a higher current density during the ORR. To further reveal the ORR kinetics of all catalysts, LSV curves (
Fig. 3b and Fig. S9 in Supporting information) were collected at different rotation speeds. The limiting current density of 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalyst increased steadily with the rotational speed. Koutecky-Levich (K-L) equation was used to determine the electron transfer number per oxygen molecule (
n) for the ORR (Fig. S10 in Supporting information). The
n for 0.05 Mn-N-P-C was -3.9, indicating that the ORR was majorly conducted through a 4e
− ORR pathway. As shown in Fig. S11 (Supporting information), the corresponding kinetic parameters were analyzed with the K-L equation and the 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalyst exhibited the highest
Jk (17.4 mA/cm
2 at 0.4 V
vs. RHE) among other N-P and Mn-P-N doped catalysts. Moreover, during the long-term
i-t-test, the current density of 0.05 Mn-N-P-C was maintained at about 93.8% (
versus 88% for commercial Pt/C catalysts,
Fig. 3c) and the LSV curves has a slightly decrease (Fig. S12 in Supporting information) which indicated that the as-synthesized Mn-N-P doped carbon sphere had better stability towards ORR compared to commercial Pt/C. The structure of 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalysts after stability test was characterized as shown in Fig. S13 (Supporting information) which maintains a stable spherical structure
. More importantly, after long-term test, the Mn, N and P are still distributed uniformly throughout the carbon spheres (Fig. S14 in Supporting information) demonstrated that the 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalyst was stable during ORR process. All the above results indicated that the as-synthesized 0.05 Mn-N-P-C catalyst has high ORR activity and good stability.