Vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells, which emit only water vapor, are one of our best potential alternatives to pollution-spewing traditional automobile engines, which account for 30% of all carbon emissions in the United States.
The catch? The catalysts needed to make these fuel cells run with sufficient power incorporate rare and expensive metals like platinum, and there’s simply not enough of these metals available to support the widespread adoption of this technology. Getting more power out of less platinum remains a challenge.
But a team led by UCLA professor Yu Huang may have turned a corner.
In a recently published study in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, they describe using a high-performing platinum-cobalt alloy that cut down on the need for platinum alone. They then broke this alloy down into miniscule particles — each about 3 nanometers long — and…