Deep Generative Models Regulate Ultralow‐Pt Catalyst Layer in Fuel Cells

ABSTRACT Reducing the precious Pt loading in catalyst layers (CLs) while maintaining fuel cell performance is critical for cost reduction, necessitating the development of an optimized CL microstructure, but conventional empirical expertise‐dependent trial‐and‐error optimization faces severe efficiency limitations when dealing with multiple transfers coupled with electrochemical reactions inside the multi‐component hierarchical porous architecture. Here, we present Generative Artificial Intelligence for Controllable Electrode Synthesis (GAI4CES), a framework that enables rapid CL microstructure synthesis, achieving nearly 500x speedup for constructing a representative CL microstructure of 128 nm 3 (in 0.36 s compared to 168 s required by traditional numerical methods). It can tailor key property constraints, such as Pt loading and electrochemical surface area (ECSA), to generate statistically representative microstructures satisfying target specifications. This capability enables an exhaustive search for the optimal CL structural design through large‐scale geometry‑constrained synthesis coupled with fast performance prediction. The optimized CL microstructure achieves an improvement of 11.6% in ECSA and a reduction of 32.9% in average ionomer thickness surrounding the Pt/C at ultralow Pt loading (e.g., 0.05 mg cm − 2 ), and contributes to a maximum 70.2% voltage increase at 3 A cm − 2 , indicating that the GAI4CES is powerful in promoting the development of advanced low‐cost and high‐performance fuel cells.

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Publication Details

Journal
Advanced Energy Materials
Published
2026-01-21
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.202506271
Primary Topic
Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion
Type
article
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article

Deep Generative Models Regulate Ultralow‐Pt Catalyst Layer in Fuel Cells

Xingyi Shi, Guobin Zhang, Yutong Mu, Dongxiao Zhang et al.
Advanced Energy Materials
Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion
article

Deep Generative Models Regulate Ultralow‐Pt Catalyst Layer in Fuel Cells

Xingyi Shi, Guobin Zhang, Yutong Mu, Dongxiao Zhang, Qiang Zheng
article en

Abstract

ABSTRACT Reducing the precious Pt loading in catalyst layers (CLs) while maintaining fuel cell performance is critical for cost reduction, necessitating the development of an optimized CL microstructure, but conventional empirical expertise‐dependent trial‐and‐error optimization faces severe efficiency limitations when dealing with multiple transfers coupled with electrochemical reactions inside the multi‐component hierarchical porous architecture. Here, we present Generative Artificial Intelligence for Controllable Electrode Synthesis (GAI4CES), a framework that enables rapid CL microstructure synthesis, achieving nearly 500x speedup for constructing a representative CL microstructure of 128 nm 3 (in 0.36 s compared to 168 s required by traditional numerical methods). It can tailor key property constraints, such as Pt loading and electrochemical surface area (ECSA), to generate statistically representative microstructures satisfying target specifications. This capability enables an exhaustive search for the optimal CL structural design through large‐scale geometry‑constrained synthesis coupled with fast performance prediction. The optimized CL microstructure achieves an improvement of 11.6% in ECSA and a reduction of 32.9% in average ionomer thickness surrounding the Pt/C at ultralow Pt loading (e.g., 0.05 mg cm − 2 ), and contributes to a maximum 70.2% voltage increase at 3 A cm − 2 , indicating that the GAI4CES is powerful in promoting the development of advanced low‐cost and high‐performance fuel cells.

Advanced Energy MaterialsVol. 16(12)
City University of Hong Kong (HK), Dongguan University of Technology (CN), City College of Dongguan University of Technology (CN), Ningbo Institute of Industrial Technology (CN), Xi'an Jiaotong University (CN)
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 82%
Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion
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Deep Generative Models Regulate Ultralow‐Pt Catalyst Layer in Fuel Cells — Xingyi Shi, Guobin Zhang, et al. · Advanced Energy Materials (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS