No. 858: Successful development of an inexpensive catalyst for fuel cell vehicles (November 6, 2014)

Technology:

Teijin developed an inexpensive catalyst for fuel cell vehicles in cooperation with Tokyo Institute of Technology. The company used iron and nitrogen for the catalyst in place of platinum. The new catalyst exhibits only 70% of the catalyst made of platinum at present, but Teijin plans to improve its performance and reduce its price to less than one tenth of the existing catalyst.

The company used iron compounds like iron chloride and polymer polyacrylonitrile (PAN) that contains nitrogen. The iron compounds and PAN are dissolved in a solvent, and they are subjected to heat treatment in a gas that contains ammonia. Subsequently, the research team created a particle several hundred nanometers in diameter. They build a fuel cell using this particle as catalyst, and obtained about 0.4 volt in 1 ampere current. Teijin made a presentation of this catalyst in the international conference of the Electrochemical Society of the U.S.  

Let's drive a Honda's fuel cell vehicle