Fuel cells articles within Nature Chemistry

Featured

  • Article |

    While much effort has been devoted to understanding how nanoparticle morphology can be leveraged to improve catalytic activity, engineering their microstructure from first principles to this end has remained difficult. Now a methodology for designing the optimal structure of a solid catalyst with the aim of achieving the highest possible activity for surface-sensitive reactions has been developed.

    • M. Núñez
    • , J. L. Lansford
    •  & D. G. Vlachos

  • Article |

    The oxygen reduction reaction limits fuel cell performance and currently requires costly electrocatalysts with high platinum content to achieve adequate power densities. Now a silver–cobalt surface alloy electrocatalyst has been developed for the oxygen reduction reaction that is stable in alkaline electrolytes and is more economical than traditional platinum-based materials.

    • Adam Holewinski
    • , Juan-Carlos Idrobo
    •  & Suljo Linic

  • Article |

    Hydrogenases are efficient and promising catalysts for fuel cells; however, they suffer from oxygen sensitivity and deactivation at high potentials. Integration of hydrogenases into redox-active hydrogels provides a redox buffer and a self-activated oxygen-scavenging mechanism. This tandem protection makes the hydrogenase a possible alternative to noble metal catalysts.

    • Nicolas Plumeré
    • , Olaf Rüdiger
    •  & Wolfgang Lubitz

  • Article |

    The widespread use of fuel cells requires improved catalysts to reduce oxygen efficiently at the cathode. It is shown that model, well-characterized size-selected PtxY nanoparticles can be synthesized by the gas aggregation technique, and that they are highly active for this reaction.

    • Patricia Hernandez-Fernandez
    • , Federico Masini
    •  & Ib Chorkendorff

  • News & Views |

    The ordered one-dimensional nanochannels found in covalent organic frameworks (COFs) could render them able to conduct protons. However, the frameworks' instability in acid has thus far precluded any practical implementations. Now, a strategy to overcome this instability has enabled proton conduction using a COF for the first time.

    • Hong Xu
    •  & Donglin Jiang

  • News & Views |

    Characterizing electrochemical behaviour on the nanometre scale is fundamental to gaining complete insight into the working mechanisms of fuel cells. The application of a new scanning probe microscopy technique can now relate local surface structure to electrochemical activity at a resolution below 10 nm.

    • Johannes A. A. W. Elemans

  • Article |

    With the cost of noble metal oxygen-reduction catalysts rendering some fuel cells and batteries prohibitively expensive, the search for effective and cheaper catalysts is underway and would be speeded up by ‘design principles’. Now, the catalytic activity of oxide materials has been correlated to σ*-orbital occupation and the extent of metal–oxygen covalency.

    • Jin Suntivich
    • , Hubert A. Gasteiger
    •  & Yang Shao-Horn

  • Article |

    The rational design of catalytic materials requires synthetic control over their reactive properties. Now, the activity of dealloyed Pt–Cu bimetallic nanoparticles, which catalyse the oxygen reduction reaction, can be tuned through control of the geometric strain at their surface.

    • Peter Strasser
    • , Shirlaine Koh
    •  & Anders Nilsson

  • Article |

    Formic acid fuel cells require nanosized intermetallic nanoparticles as anode catalysts, but current techniques are poor at producing the small size required. Now, surface-modified ordered mesoporous carbons have been used to produce nanocrystallites as small as 1.5 nm that are extremely active catalysts.

    • Xiulei Ji
    • , Kyu Tae Lee
    •  & Linda F. Nazar

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