Professor Park Jung-won / Courtesy of Seoul National University
A joint research team from Seoul National University and Stanford University has developed a next-generation catalyst technology that dramatically improves hydrogen production efficiency while sharply reducing costs, a breakthrough that could accelerate the commercialization of clean hydrogen energy, the Ministry of Science and ICT said Friday.
The study, published in the journal Science, introduces a platinum cluster catalyst engineered with atomic-level precision, allowing researchers to reduce platinum use to one-tenth that of existing commercial catalysts while improving both hydrogen output and durability.
The international team was led by Park Jung-won, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University, along with Stanford University professors Thomas F. Jaramillo and Matteo Cargnello.
Hydrogen is widely seen as a key clean energy source in the global transition toward carbon neutrality, but the high cost of platinum-based catalysts has remained a major obstacle to large-scale adoption.
The researchers said they developed a new synthesis strategy that removes ligands surrounding platinum atoms and directly binds the atoms to a support material, creating highly stable platinum clusters measuring about 1 nanometer, or roughly one-100,000th the thickness of a human hair.
The catalyst was designed for liquid organic hydrogen carrier technology, which stores and transports hydrogen in liquid form and is considered safer and more economical than high pressure gas or liquefied hydrogen systems.
The team also said it had identified for the first time that platinum clusters of nearly identical size can contain between 13 and 31 atoms, proving that the number of atoms — not simply particle size — is a decisive factor in hydrogen production performance and catalyst durability.
Researchers said the catalyst can already be produced in laboratory batches of several dozen grams through a single process, suggesting relatively few barriers to industrial-scale manufacturing.
“This research goes beyond optimizing catalyst size and demonstrates that precise atomic control can maximize hydrogen production performance,” Park said.
Source: Korea Times News
