Fuel cell catalyst production could remove big barrier to mainstream hydrogen cars

A new process for creating fuel cell catalysts could help remove one of the biggest barriers to widespread use of hydrogen cars.

Low-cost catalysts with high activity and stability are “critical” for the commercialisation of hydrogen fuel cells, said Qiurong Shi, co-first author of a new paper from Washington State University. 

The team claimed hydrogen cells will be a “critical” source of clean energy as they are twice as efficient as combustion engines and their only waste product is water. The high price of platinum-based catalysts has previously hindered their commercialisation, the researchers said.

Developers would like to use non-precious metals such as iron or cobalt instead of platinum, but reactions with these abundant metals tend to stop working after a short time.

Recently, researchers developed single-atom catalysts that reportedly work as well as precious metals in laboratory testing. The researchers improved the stability and activity of the non-precious metals by working with them at the nano-scale as single-atom catalysts.

In their new work, the Washington State team led by professor Yuehe Lin used iron or cobalt salts and the small molecule glucosamine as precursors, in a straightforward high temperature process to create the single-atom catalysts. The process can significantly lower the cost of the catalysts and could easily scale up for production.

The iron-carbon catalysts they developed were reportedly more stable than commercial platinum catalysts. They also maintained good activity and did not become contaminated, which is often a problem with common metals.

“This process has many advantages," said Chengzhou Zhu, a first author on the paper who developed the high temperature process. "It makes large-scale production feasible, and it allows us to increase the number and boost the reactivity of active sites on the catalyst."

The research was published in Advanced Energy Materials.