A research team in the McKelvey School of Engineering is part of a multi-discipline, multi-institution group that is working to make hydrogen fuel cells a viable option in the quest for clean transportation.
The Washington University in St. Louis portion of the effort was led by Vijay Ramani, the Roma B. and Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished University Professor at the McKelvey School of Engineering, who served as a corresponding author for the study.
The research team demonstrated a high-performance platinum-group-metal free (PGM-free) catalyst that effectively resolves the twin issues of cost and durability. They synthesized a cobalt-nitrogen-carbon catalyst with an ultra-fine dispersion of catalytically active sites. They demonstrated that the catalyst approached the performance of state-of-the-art PGM-free catalysts and was four times as stable as the best PGM-free iron-nitrogen-carbon catalysts.