Fuel cells high catalytic activity

In a fuel cell, the electrocatalysts generate electrical power by reducing the oxygen at the cathode and oxidizing the fuel at the anode [1], Pt and Pt alloys are the most commonly used electrocatalysts in PEFCs due to their high catalytic activity and chemical stability [99-103]. 

Nanotubes show also very promising properties in the fuel cell reaction. Kim et al. used gold nanostructures such as nanotubes or nanoparticles to oxidise CO [91]. The process is based on the high catalytic activity of gold nanoparticles for CO... 

Catalyst durability. Pt is the key to fuel cells because of its unusually high catalytic activity. Unfortunately, Pt is expensive and has limited availability. The cost of the PEMFC is too high for practical applications. One of the strategies to... 

Aqueous electrolytes are limited to temperatures of >200 °C because of their high water vapor pressure and/or rapid degradation at higher temperatures. The operating temperature also determines the type of fuel that can be used in a fuel cell. The low-temperature fuel cells with aqueous electrolytes are, in most practical applications, restricted to H2 as a fuel. In high-temperature fuel cells, CO and even CH4 can be used because of the inherently rapid electrode kinetics and the lesser need for high catalytic activity at high tanperature. 

Multimetallic catalysts, alloy catalysts, intermetallic compounds, fuel cell catalysts, colloidal intermediates, metal complexes, and metal clusters have received considerable attention [12-21] because the metal-metal cooperating bifunctional catalysts which can activate reactants simultaneously showed high catalytic activity and stereoselectivity under mild conditions [19]. In fact, there have been many bifunctional multimetallic catalysts in which multimetallic alloy- and electro-catalysts offer a way to fine-tune the catalytic properties of metals, atomic composition, and microstrucrnres [16-18, 20]. Cooperative multimetallic activation of oxidants via the multielectron transfer is also a common feature in biological oxidation catalysis [14]. Artificial multimetallic complexes with two or more metal atoms that contain... 

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