Approaches to improve the performance of anode methanol oxidation reaction-a short review

Fuel cells are promising energy conversion devices which do not require the electrical charging process in comparison with a traditional secondary battery. Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), including direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), are the key technologies in the future due to the high energy conversion efficiency, low emission, and high energy density. DMFCs are promising to be used in mobile electronic devices (power under a few hundred watts) due to the easily and safely transport feature of methanol. Platinum is regarded as the most effective catalyst for the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). However, the poor performance and the high cost of Pt block the DMFC large-scale applications. The essential method to overcome this shortfall is to develop effective modified-Pt, low-Pt and non-Pt catalysts. This short review paper will focus on the solution to improve the performance of anode MOR in the past 2 years. The structure of this article displays in Figure 1.