Promising Advance in Fuel-Cell Technology

Chemists at Brown University and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, both in the United States, are reporting a promising advance in fuel-cell technology. Fuel cells require a catalyst that can operate efficiently and last a long time. The precious metal platinum has been the catalyst of choice for most researchers, but it has several drawbacks: it’s expensive and it breaks down over time in fuel-cell reactions. The researchers at Brown have demonstrated that a nanoparticle with a palladium core and an iron-platinum shell outperforms commercially available pure-platinum catalysts, and lasts longer. In laboratory tests, the new palladium/iron-platinum nanoparticles generated 12 times more current than the pure platinum ones, with the output remaining consistent over 10,000 cycles – whereas the platinum models began to deteriorate after 1,000 cycles. Vismadeb Mazumder, a graduate student and co-author of the study, says “[T]his is a very good demonstration that catalysts with a core and a shell can be made readily in half-gram quantities in the lab, they’re active, and they last. The next step is to scale them up for commercial use, and we are confident we’ll be able to do that.”

Merid.org