The use of fuel cells for energy applications has seen many advances over the past few decades However, technical hurdles remain for the large scale commercialization of the fuel cell technology. For example, for direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) the main challenges associated with the anode electrocatalysts are (1) the high cost of Pt and Ru, which are the leading DMFC electrocatalysts, and (2) the strong binding of CO molecules on the Pt and Ru surfaces, which block active sites necessary for the electro-oxidation of CH3OH. Therefore, the commercialization of DMFC depends upon the development of new catalytic materials that should be more cost effective and show lower binding energy for adsorbed CO.
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