Pd-Ti and Pd-Co-Au electrocatalysts as a replacement for platinum for oxygen reduction in proton exchange membrane fuel cells.

Fuel cells are appealing for a variety of energy needs, but the high materials and manufacturing costs have hampered their commercialization. The limited availability and the high cost of the currently used platinum catalysts, for example, pose a serious problem in their practical application. We report here non-platinum electrocatalyst systems, such as Pd-Co-Au and Pd-Ti, that are proposed from simple thermodynamic guidelines and selected by a rapid screening technique, which show electrochemical performance in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) similar to that found with commercial platinum catalysts. This finding opens up a new avenue to develop potentially less expensive electrocatalysts.