Cheaper fuel cells with aluminum

New Scientist : Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas are working on a hydrogen fuel cell that uses aluminum as a catalyst. Although fuel cells are a potentially highly efficient power source for cars, their cost has proven prohibitive because they require expensive noble metals such as platinum for a catalyst. Now Irinder Chopra and coworkers have found that if aluminum is treated with a tiny bit of titanium and exposed to molecular hydrogen at 90 kelvin, the H ₂ will break up and bind to the metal. When the metal is heated the hydrogen is released and forms H ₂ again. The team’s results were published in Nature Materials.