At a lab in Buffalo, New York, a graduate student named Kaiwen Chen just helped solve a problem that has held back clean energy for years. Chen, working with a team at the University at Buffalo, developed a way to create tiny particles called high-entropy alloy nanoparticles in just milliseconds. That's faster than the blink of an eye. These particles could become the engines of better, cheaper fuel cells and other clean-energy technologies.
Fuel cells power everything from buses to backup generators, but they rely on catalysts — substances that speed up chemical reactions. Today, most catalysts contain platinum, iridium, or other metals that cost more than gold. That's a big reason why clean-energy devices haven't spread more widely. But this new research, published in the journal Nature Communications, offers a path forward.
The team's method combines five or more metals into one tiny particle, something scientists call a high-entropy alloy. Traditional alloys mix one main metal with small amounts of others. By contrast, high-entropy alloys toss in nearly equal parts of five, six, or even eight different elements. That creates a huge number of possible combinations — and a much better chance of finding one that works well.
"If you only have two ingredients, there are only so many things you can make," said Mark Swihart, a professor at UB who co-authored the study. "When you can combine five, six or even eight different elements, the number of possibilities grows dramatically."
The process works by spraying tiny droplets of liquid metals into a flame along with hydrogen gas. The heat fuses everything into nanoparticles before they have a chance to clump together. That matters because the size and consistency of these particles often determines how well they work as catalysts.
In lab tests, one five-element alloy outperformed several commercial catalysts at hydrogen oxidation — a key reaction inside fuel cells. That success suggests researchers could one day swap expensive platinum for cheaper metals without losing performance.
The team is now working to speed things up even more by pairing their method with artificial intelligence and computer modeling. The goal is to automate the search for the best material combinations, testing thousands of possibilities automatically instead of one by one.
"For clean-energy technologies to succeed, they need to make both economic and scientific sense," Swihart said. "Improved, lower-cost catalysts could make hydrogen fuel cells and other electrochemical processes more feasible for widespread use."