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Extremely Low-Cost Alternative for the Oxygen Reduction Catalyst of Fuel Cell

Rajapakse RMG, Senarathna KGC,  Kondo A, Jayawardena PS and Shimomura M

Fuel cells offer an enabling alternative energy technology for the present day useful energy crisis. However, one of the major obstacles of fuel cells in powering motor vehicles is the enormous cost associated with the catalysts used in both half-reactions which are Pt and Pt-Rh, respectively, for the anodic and cathodic half-reactions. Among several strategies put forward to reduce the cost of fuel cells, lowering of the amount of platinum used and replacing highly expensive platinum by low-cost catalysts are two major approaches to realize the development of fuel cellpowered motor vehicles. We have been pioneered in developing such low-cost catalysts for the difficult half-reaction, viz., the oxygen reduction half reaction of the fuel cells. We present here the development and the activity of Ag/ Polypyrrole/Montmorillonite Clay catalyst which performs equally to expensive Pt-Rh catalyst used for the oxygen reduction half-reaction of fuel cells. We show that this catalyst functions very similar to highly expensive Pt-Rh catalyst and hence the former can be conveniently substituted for the latter in practical applications.