Making hydrogen fuel cells 'less precious'

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://source.washu.edu/2026/02/making-hydrogen-fuel-cells-less-precious/

WashU chemical engineers work to bring stability to iron components in fuel-cell technologies

By Leah Shaffer February 6, 2026

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In research published in Nature Catalysis, Wu and his team outlined how they stabilize iron catalysts for use in the fuel cell, which would lower costs for fuel-cell vehicles and other niche applications such as low-altitude aviation and artificial intelligence data centers.

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Unlike electric battery-run cars, people can’t recharge fuel-cell vehicles using their home electricity sources. So there needs to be affordable and easily accessible hydrogen refueling infrastructure for this clean tech to take off. Making use of plentiful and affordable iron catalysts would go a long way to lowering those costs. But first, researchers needed to make iron more stable to handle the fuel-cell chemistry involved.

Wu and his team did so by creating a chemical vapor of gases that can stabilize the iron catalysts during thermal activation, an innovative approach to significantly improve catalyst stability while maintaining adequate activity in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). The result vastly improved iron catalysts’ durability along with increased energy density and life span. The team chose PEMFCs among different fuel types because they best serve heavy-duty vehicles, things like transport trucks, buses and construction equipment — vehicles that already go to centralized fueling centers. It’s most affordable and efficient for the technology to be first adopted by heavy-duty vehicle fleets, which would further lower costs as it becomes widespread and further efficiencies of scale come on board.

“After suffering from the poor stability for decades, now we were able to address the critical problem,” said Wu, who explained that next steps will include further refining their processes to make iron catalysts even better than precious metals for the fuel cells of tomorrow.

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Zeng, Y., Qi, M., Liang, J. et al. Regulating in situ gaseous deposition to construct highly durable Fe–N–C oxygen-reduction fuel cell catalysts. Nat Catal (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-026-01482-2