ABSTRACT
Ever since the invention of the fuel cell by Grove, electrochemists have looked for better and cheaper catalysts. There have been signicant improvements, but mainly in the reduction of the load of precious metals, not in nding a material signicantly more active than platinum. All plausible pure metals, many binary, ternary, and even quaternary alloys, have been tried, but without much success. One gets the impression that progress has been slow and incremental and that with bulk materials, we are meeting the law of diminishing returns.
