New Imaging Shows Fuel-cell's Secrets

摘要

Using a new technique known as aberration-corrected Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have identified specific atomic structures near the surface of nanoparticles in a fuel cell's platinum-cobalt catalyst. The nanoparticles are known to catalyze some of the chemical reactions behind fuel cells, making those reactions run up to four times faster than if platinum alone is used, but no one understood exactly why. As a result of the imaging, the researchers are able to propose a theory for why the material is so active.