Brown chemists report promising advance in fuel-cell technology

08 Jun 2010

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Creating catalysts that can operate efficiently and last a long time is a big barrier to taking fuel-cell technology from the lab bench to the assembly line. The precious metal platinum has been the choice for many researchers, but platinum has two major downsides: It is expensive, and it breaks down over time in fuel-cell reactions.

 
Metal masters: Vismadeb Mazumder (left) and chemistry professor Shouheng Sun, both of Brown University, have demonstrated that a unique core-shell nanoparticle is a cheaper, more active and longer-lasting fuel-cell catalyst than commercially available platinum products.
Credit: Mike Cohea, Brown

In a new study, chemists at Brown University report a promising advance. They have created a unique core and shell nanoparticle that uses far less platinum yet performs more efficiently and lasts longer than commercially available pure-platinum catalysts at the cathode end of fuel-cell reactions.

The chemistry known as oxygen reduction reaction takes place at the fuel cell's cathode, creating water as its only waste, rather than the global-warming carbon dioxide produced by internal combustion systems. The cathode is also where up to 40 percent of a fuel cell's efficiency is lost, so ''this is a crucial step in making fuel cells a more competitive technology with internal combustion engines and batteries,'' said Shouheng Sun, professor of chemistry at Brown and co-author of the paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The research team, which includes Brown graduate student and co-author Vismadeb Mazumder and researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, created a five-nanometer palladium (Pd) core and encircled it with a shell consisting of iron and platinum (FePt). The trick, Mazumder said, was in molding a shell that would retain its shape and require the smallest amount of platinum to pull off an efficient reaction. The team created the iron-platinum shell by decomposing iron pentacarbonyl [Fe(CO)5] and reducing platinum acetylacetonate [Pt(acac)2], a technique Sun first reported in a 2000 Science paper. The result was a shell that uses only 30 percent platinum, although the researchers say they expect they will be able to make thinner shells and use even less platinum.

 
Less platinum, better efficiency The multimetallic nanoparticle created by Brown University chemists for fuel-cell reactions uses a palladium core and an iron-platinum shell. Credit: Sun Lab/Brown University
''If we don't use iron pentacarbonyl, then the platinum doesn't form on the (palladium) core,'' Mazumder said.

The researchers demonstrated for the first time that they could consistently produce the unique core-shell structures. In laboratory tests, the palladium/iron-platinum nanoparticles generated 12 times more current than commercially available pure-platinum catalysts at the same catalyst weight. The output also remained consistent over 10,000 cycles, at least ten times longer than commercially available platinum models that begin to deteriorate after 1,000 cycles.

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