A joint team from Seoul National University and Stanford University in the United States has developed a new technology that can boost hydrogen production performance and catalyst durability while sharply cutting the amount of costly platinum used.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said a research team led by Seoul National University chemical and biological engineering professor Park Jeong-won and Stanford University professors Thomas F. Jaramillo and Matteo Cargnello has developed next-generation catalyst technology capable of delivering world-leading hydrogen production performance. The findings were published in the international journal "Science" on the 29th.
Hydrogen is drawing attention as a clean energy source that emits no carbon, but it is difficult to transport in large quantities. Compressing it as a high-pressure gas or liquefying and shipping it carries major safety and expense burdens.
One alternative under discussion is "liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC)" technology. This method stores hydrogen in a liquid compound for transport and then extracts the hydrogen where needed. While it can be handled like a liquid fuel, it has faced the limitation of high expense because metal catalysts such as platinum are required to extract the hydrogen.
The researchers focused on raising performance while using far fewer platinum atoms than before. They removed the "ligands," the chemicals surrounding the platinum atoms, and used a synthesis strategy that makes the platinum bind directly and firmly to the catalyst support. As a result, they succeeded in uniformly forming clusters of platinum atoms about 1 nm (nanometer; one-billionth of a meter) in size. One nanometer is about one one-hundred-thousandth the thickness of a human hair.
In particular, they not only made the cluster size uniform but also adjusted the number of platinum atoms per cluster to be similar, increasing the precision of the catalyst structure.
In experiments, the new catalyst increased both hydrogen output and catalyst lifespan while cutting platinum usage to about one-tenth that of commercial catalysts. The team also confirmed that this synthesis method can produce tens of grams at the laboratory scale.
Seoul National University professor Park Jeong-won said, "This study shows that performance can be improved by precisely controlling not only the size of the catalyst but also the number of atoms," adding, "It could help raise the efficiency of hydrogen storage and utilization technologies."
References
Science (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aeb3087