抄録
Polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) are expected to be alternative power sources for transportable and residential applications due to their high theoretical efficiency of energy conversion. However, the efficiency on a present technology used platinum as cathode catalyst is not so high because of a large overpotential of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). A large overpotential of ORR is needed to be reduced to contribute to the development of a sustainable and clean energy system. Other issues of the Pt usage are the high cost and the limited amount of the resources. Considering the application of PEFCs to fuel cell vehicles, the development of more active cathode catalysts or to further reduce the amount of platinum without losing cell performance is required. In this paper, we summarized the problems of PEFCs and the situation of research and development of more active cathode catalysts. In addition, the trial of non-platinum materials on new cathode catalyst was mentioned.
