| Given the potential dangers of climate change, geopolitical risks of energy security, and economic dislocations of fossil fuel shortages, the need for technological breakthroughs in clean, efficient energy conversion systems is overwhelming. Starting from an analysis of the Pt|YSZ system and progressing to development of improvements to energy conversion in hydrogen fuel cells and energy storage in a new all-electron battery, this work suggests paths towards improved energy devices.;Fuel cells may provide clean, efficient power sources for transportation or distributed generation, but the high cost of platinum catalysts currently prevents wide adoption. A new catalyst of non-precious metals was developed through computational modeling. Experimentally, the new catalyst shows activity between 10-100% of Pt at 0.01% the materials cost. The non-Pt catalyst also demonstrates improved tolerance to deactivation by ripening or poisoning. Further improvements may open the way to cheaper and more efficient fuel cells.;Improved energy storage in batteries will be essential in a future of abundant electricity generation by intermittent renewables such as solar and wind, and is currently necessary to enable electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Even advanced Li-ion batteries have issues of high cost, short lifetime, safety, low power density, and marginal energy density. This work presents a new type of battery, one that stores energy as electrons rather than as ions, thereby avoiding many of the problems inherent in all chemical batteries. Prototypes demonstrate very high power density and energy density at least on par with the best reported batteries to date. |
