Microsoft Partners with Johnson Matthey to Research Better Catalysts for Hydrogen Fuel Cells

That Azure Quantum team at Microsoft to work with Johnson Matthey to advance hydrogen fuel cell technology, which will greatly help to achieve a zero-carbon future. Catalysts are used in hydrogen fuel cells to help facilitate the chemical reactions in a full cell to produce electricity. Currently, the best catalytic material is platinum, but it is expensive and not easy to produce. One of the goals of the research was to find a cheaper and more readily available material that could do an equivalent job as a catalyst. The team used predictive modeling tools to simulate chemical reactions to understand how different materials would perform. Currently, the team is working with a classic supercomputer and has shown significant progress with a 50 percent increase in the speed of chemical calculations. As more powerful quantum processors become available, the goal of this research is to shift to a hybrid workflow with classical and quantum processors working together for significantly more speeds. Additional information about this research can be seen in the blog posted on the Microsoft Azure Quantum website Here.

April 15, 2023