Hydrogen fuel cells are often called the future of clean transportation — but there's a catch that's held the technology back for years: the catalysts that make them work are made from platinum, one of the most expensive and rare metals on Earth. A breakthrough from the University of Delaware may have found a way around that.
The Platinum Problem
In traditional proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, platinum is used to catalyze the hydrogen oxidation reaction — the chemical process at the heart of how fuel cells generate electricity. Platinum works extremely well, but it costs a fortune, which is a large part of why hydrogen fuel cell vehicles remain far too expensive for most consumers. A Toyota Mirai, for example, carried a price tag around $57,000.
Professor Yushan Yan, a Distinguished Engineering Professor at the University of Delaware's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, set his sights on fixing this.
The Nickel Solution
Yan's team found that by switching the fuel cell's operating environment from acidic to basic (alkaline), nickel — a far cheaper and more abundant metal — could match platinum's catalytic activity. Specifically, they used nickel supported on nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes as the hydrogen oxidation reaction catalyst.
This configuration, operating within what they call a hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cell (HEMFC), delivered high performance at dramatically lower cost. The findings were published in Nature Communications in January 2016.
"This new hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cell can offer high performance at an unprecedented low cost," Yan said. "Our real hope is that we can put hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells into cars and make them truly affordable — maybe $23,000 for a Toyota Mirai."
What It Means for Fuel Cell Vehicles
Fuel cell vehicles have several theoretical advantages over battery electric vehicles: longer driving ranges, faster refueling, and better suitability for heavy transport like trucks, buses, and trains. The primary barrier to adoption has consistently been cost. If nickel-based catalysts can deliver performance comparable to platinum at a fraction of the price, that changes the economics of the entire industry.
Yan is also a firm believer in the broader hydrogen economy — the idea that cheap, clean hydrogen produced from renewable energy could power transportation, industry, and energy storage at scale. More affordable fuel cells are a key enabling piece of that vision.
Still Work to Do
As of the 2016 publication, the HEMFC approach still needed further development to reach commercial maturity. Yan's lab has continued refining the technology in subsequent years, including later work published in Nature Materials showing a nickel-based catalyst more than six times more efficient than the next-best non-platinum alternative.
The goal: a fully platinum-free, high-performance fuel cell that can compete with internal combustion engines on cost and accessibility. The 2016 breakthrough was a significant step toward that goal.
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