While research continues around the globe to find alternatives to fossil fuels for vehicle applications (see "Fuel Cells In The Warehouse" for one such example), scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory say they have made progress in solving one major impediment to the use of fuel cells -- the degradation of platinum in stop-and-go applications.
Platinum, an efficient electrocatalyst for accelerating chemical reactions in fuel cells, degrades over time, reducing its effectiveness as a catalyst. However, under lab conditions that mimic a fuel cell environment, researchers at the Department of Energy laboratory have discovered a method to overcome this problem. Their technique? The addition of gold clusters to the platinum electrocatalyst.
"Promising possibilities" is how researcher Radoslav Adzic describes the scientists' discovery. The next step: to reproduce the results in real fuel cells.
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