Smoltek’s Fuel Cell Breakthrough Slashes Iridium Use, Advancing Hydrogen Fuel Cell Tech

Smoltek Hydro­gen, the hydro­gen divi­sion of Swe­den’s Smoltek Nan­otech Hold­ing AB, has achieved a sig­nif­i­cant break­through in fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy. The com­pa­ny suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed pro­to­type tests on its pro­pri­etary nanos­truc­tured fuel cell elec­trodes in part­ner­ship with a lead­ing glob­al auto­mo­tive man­u­fac­tur­er. The tests demon­strat­ed that these advanced PEM hydro­gen fuel cells deliv­er sol­id per­for­mance and excep­tion­al durability.

The rev­o­lu­tion­ary aspect of this devel­op­ment lies in Smoltek’s abil­i­ty to reduce irid­i­um usage by up to 95%. This achieve­ment address­es a crit­i­cal indus­try chal­lenge, as irid­i­um is rare, expen­sive, and dif­fi­cult to source—creating major obsta­cles for fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy scal­ing. By uti­liz­ing smart con­duc­tive nanos­truc­tures, Smoltek main­tains high per­for­mance lev­els while dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduc­ing mate­r­i­al costs and sup­ply chain constraints.

Fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful ini­tial test­ing, Smoltek plans to expand pro­to­typ­ing and pur­sue com­mer­cial pilot projects with auto­mo­tive part­ners. The Swe­den-based com­pa­ny aims to tran­si­tion from tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tor to com­mer­cial sup­pli­er between 2025–2028, tar­get­ing heavy-duty trans­port appli­ca­tions. This break­through could sig­nif­i­cant­ly advance hydro­gen mobil­i­ty acces­si­bil­i­ty and afford­abil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in freight trans­port, con­tribut­ing to indus­tri­al decar­boniza­tion and reduc­ing emis­sions from heavy-duty vehicles.