Platinum-lead nanoparticles strain to become fuel cell catalysts

Now, scientists from the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and California State University-Northridge, together with scientists from Soochow University, Peking University and Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics in China, have developed just such improved catalysts. These catalysts are able to undergo 50,000 voltage cycles with a negligible decay in their catalytic activity and no apparent changes in their structure or elemental composition. As reported in a paper in Science, the catalysts comprise ‘nanoplates’ made from an atomically-ordered Pt and lead (Pb) core surrounded by a thick uniform shell of four Pt layers.