Chinese Team Quadruples Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Power With New Catalyst

Scientists at the Beijing Institute of Technology have developed a new catalyst design that boosts the power output of hydrogen fuel cells, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science on Thursday. The advance applies to proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), already used in many hydrogen-powered vehicles, which convert hydrogen's chemical energy directly into electricity, producing only water as exhaust.

Inside a PEMFC, hydrogen splits at the anode into protons and electrons; the protons cross a membrane to the cathode while electrons flow through an external circuit, generating electricity. The bottleneck has been how fast protons move through the catalyst layer, since materials such as Nafion tend to form tightly packed nanoscale structures that slow transport.

The Beijing team designed a new interface, called a Brønsted acid-Lewis base interface, that works like a relay race: instead of travelling directly to the catalyst surface, protons hop between intermediate ‘islands’. Laboratory tests found this increased proton diffusion tenfold, improved proton conductivity by a factor of 6.5, and more than halved activation energy — the energy barrier protons must overcome before a reaction can occur.

Under standard operating conditions, the new design produced four times as much power as conventional cells, reaching 0.75 watts per square centimetre at 0.7 volts while using little platinum. It delivered 6.9 kilowatts of power per gram of platinum, outperforming state-of-the-art fuel cells, and after 30,000 cycles retained 63 per cent of its initial peak power, versus 30 per cent for conventional systems. The researchers said the gains could be especially valuable for demanding uses such as space missions.

The breakthrough comes as China's hydrogen sector expands: production capacity exceeded 51 million tonnes a year by the end of 2025, with about 32,000 fuel-cell vehicles on China's roads. However, substantial hurdles remain — researchers must show the technology can be manufactured at industrial scale, kept affordable, and validated for long-term safety and reliability outside the laboratory.