For a climate-friendly automotive sector, fuel cell technology becomes increasingly important. A promising step towards accessibility and commercialization of this technology may be reached using Fe-N-C catalyst materials for the cathode reaction of the fuel cell. With their high activity, Fe-N-C catalysts can potentially substitute currently used, expensive platinum catalysts. Fe-N-C catalysts however lack stability and their active site composition is not sufficiently well understood for systematic improvements. This project combines spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations in order to uncover the structure of the active site(s) in Fe-N-C catalysts and better understand their electronic structures.

We explore new materials in the nanoworld, nanomaterials that behave different from what we know from daily life. For the first time we exploit the beautiful symmetry of crystal lattices with the rich diversity of molecular building blocks. Linked together in framework materials or two-dimensional polymers they form a new class of hybrid materials and offer the implementation of new concepts for catalysis without precious metals, high-efficiency hydrogen generation, and precision sensing, to name just a few. These developments have been made possible by the enormous power of the high-performance computing facilities at ZIH Dresden.