Hydrogen fuel cells are one of today's renewable energy solutions, but scientists have not solved the problem of battery critical material catalysts, but scientists at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) have found a better, cheaper catalyst than platinum, or a license. Further reduce the cost of hydrogen fuel electric vehicles.
The catalyst is called cofacial cobalt porphyrins - if it is not a chemical system, it may not know what it is, but this obscure and cheap compound is actually a good at driving hydrogen and oxidative reactions. Research is expected to accelerate the development of hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Unlike a strange name, the catalyst practice is not complicated, as with simple home-made chocolate: the cobalt porphyrin and ruthenium two liquid stirred flask and heated, allowed to stand for 2 days, the new hydrogen fuel agent It's finished.
This self-assembly (self-assembled) catalyst manufacturing methods quite simple, material is also very cheap, UB College of Arts and Sciences assistant professor of chemistry Timothy Cook said catalyst material contains ruthenium and cobalt, platinum price than they should, and performance than today the platinum catalyst the market better.
Cook pointed out that as soon as you think of molecular self-assembly, Lego will emerge in the brain. These construction elements are designed to be assembled, like pieces of bricks or puzzles. The difference is that these blocks will interact and attract each other. , put them together and apply a little energy, when the blocks are naturally combined.
However, it is not easy to make the chemical bond successfully joined. In order to ensure that the chemical bond will be perfectly connected, the study will create a purple and fixed enamel. Coplanar cobalt-purple is composed of two kinds of cobalt-purple molecules, and the molecules are stacked like a sandwich. In the middle, it is connected by hydrazine. After mixing the cobalt-purple solution with the hydrazine solution, it will assemble itself into a coplanar cobalt-purple catalyst within 2 days.
Scientists have long known that purple can capture and decompose oxygen, but Cook says it is very difficult to build artificial purple-structured catalysts. The process is expensive and complicated, with many steps, and the final yield is small.
However, self-assembly completely solves this problem. The Cook team used 79 grams of initial material to make 79 grams of coplanar cobalt-purple. The yield was only 1% lower than other laboratories. The study can also easily test different amounts of strontium. This makes it easier to adjust the electrochemical quality of the compound to create a more desirable catalyst.
The catalyst functions like a platinum catalyst to promote the oxidative reaction in the battery, which is expected to reduce the cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the future, and low-cost fuel cells can simultaneously promote the development of other hydrogen energy devices, Cook said, in order to reduce 2. Hydrogen fuel car prices, we urgently need a catalyst that is cheaper than platinum.
The first author of the paper, Amanda N. Oldacre, said they can use self-assembly techniques to make cheaper catalyst materials in 48 hours, even without the time-consuming and cumbersome purification steps. The current study has been published in Chemistry: A European Journal.
