Over the past few decades, direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) have been intensively developed as clean and high-efficiency energy conversion devices. However, their dependence on expensive Pt-based catalysts for both the anode and the cathode make them unsuitable for large-scale commercialization. The essential solution to addressing this shortfall is to development of low-Pt and non-Pt catalysts.

In their paper, which was newly published in Energy Environ. Sci., 2011, 4, 2736–2753 , researchers from Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry reported the latest advances in the fundamental understanding of the composition–activity and structure–activity relationships, and innovative synthesis, and promising developments in catalysts for DMFC are highlighted as well. With regard to durability, the main degradation mechanism of these catalysts and the corresponding mitigation strategy are presented.

The researchers believe that these combined efforts will facilitate broad-scale application of cost-effective and high-efficiency DMFCs.

The work was supported the by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 20876153, 20703043, 21073180, 21011130027, 21073180 and 20933004), the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, 2011CB935702), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program, Nos. 2007AA05Z159 and 2007AA05Z143), the Knowledge Innovation Project of CAS (KGCXZ-Y10-344) and the Science & Technology Research Programs of Jilin Province (Nos. 20102204 and 20100420).