A team of Canadian researchers has improved hydrogen fuel cell design by copying patterns found in nature—specifically from lizard skin and plant leaves.
This breakthrough could help make clean energy more powerful and reliable, especially in large-scale uses like powering electric trucks or bringing electricity to remote communities.
Hydrogen fuel cells create electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen.
They produce only water and heat as byproducts, which makes them a promising green energy solution with no carbon emissions.
However, there’s a problem: fuel cells struggle to manage the water they produce, which limits how much power they can generate.
If too much water builds up inside the fuel cell, it blocks the flow of reactants (hydrogen and oxygen), lowering efficiency.
To solve this issue, University of Toronto Ph.D. student Eric Chadwick looked to nature for ideas—a process called biomimicry.
He was inspired by how lizards in dry regions use their scales to collect and direct water to their mouths and how the veins in some plant leaves guide rainwater to their roots.
These natural systems are great at moving water in a single direction, something fuel cells also need to do.
Chadwick and his team designed new water channels inside the fuel cell—called flow fields—based on these natural patterns. These redesigned channels help move water out of the fuel cell more efficiently and evenly.
Using powerful X-ray imaging at the Canadian Light Source in Saskatchewan, the team watched their new design in action. They found that the fuel cell had a 30% increase in peak power compared to older designs.
It also had a more even spread of water and reactants inside the cell, which means the platinum catalyst inside the fuel cell was used more effectively.
With better water management, the new channels also allowed more hydrogen and oxygen to reach the catalyst layer, improving performance even further.
The next goal is to build a larger version of the improved fuel cell and use computer models to help adapt the nature-inspired design for bigger systems.
Chadwick believes that using patterns from nature to reduce our environmental impact is not only effective, but meaningful.
“It’s really satisfying that we can take something from nature and use it to help protect nature,” he says.
