Electrochemical reduction of oxygen in alkaline solution is an important reaction for electrochemical devices for energy conversion and storage. Platinum-based catalysts still have great importance in proton–exchange membrane fuel cell. Due to high cost, limited supply and insufficient durability of platinum catalyst remain the major barriers to the development of fuel cell. There are two strategies to remove this barrier: reducing Pt loading and developing non-precious metal electrocatalyst. Microporous materials derived from organic precursors have considerable scientific interest due to application in alkaline fuel cells, metal-air batteries and biosensing.

Here we synthesized an electrocatalyst with high activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) from melamine as nitrogen precursor and ferric chloride as iron precursor by solvothermal method. The final catalyst was prepared through high temperature pyrolysis and labeled as MTP-Fe-C. The MTP-Fe-C catalyst has mesoporous structure with Brunauer−Emmett−Teller surface area up to 788 m² g^-1. XPS measurement revealed that N species (cyano-, pyridinic-, pyrrolic-, graphitic-N and Fe-N) distributed in catalyst due to high density of amine and triazine functional groups in nitrogen precursor. MTP-Fe-C possesses high ORR activity (0.60 mA mg^-1 at 1.0 V vs RHE, about half of Pt/C catalyst) and low H₂O₂ yield (< 1%) in O₂-saturation 0.1 M NaOH solution, showing its promising application in fuel cell.