A team of engineers at the University of Delaware has developed a technology that could make fuel cells cheaper and more durable, a breakthrough that could speed up the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles.
They describe their results in a paper published in Nature Communications.
Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are a green alternative to internal combustion engines because they produce power through electrochemical reactions, leaving no pollution behind.
Materials called catalysts spur these electrochemical reactions. Platinum is the most common catalyst in the type of fuel cells used in vehicles.
However, platinum is expensive -- as anyone who's shopped for jewelry knows. The metal costs around $30,000 per kilogram.
Instead, the UD team made a catalyst of tungsten carbide, which goes for around $150 per kilogram. They produced tungsten carbide nanoparticles in a novel way, much smaller and more scalable than previous methods.
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