Researchers from two Madrid Universities have created a material that could vastly improve the conductivity of fuel cells.

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which analyzed the molecular structure of the super-lattice material, says it improves ionic conductivity by a factor of 100 million.

In conventional fuel cells, the ions have to travel through very narrow gaps in the material. Forcing the ions through requires high temperatures, a big stumbling block that's helped keep hydrogen cars on the drawing board.

The new stuff solves this problem by, um, I'll just let ORNL's Maria Varela explain it: "The new layered material solves this problem by combining two materials with very different crystal structures. The mismatch triggers a distortion of the atomic arrangement at their interface and creates a pathway through which ions can easily travel."

With the hydrogen highway is so much less congested, the system can operate at room temperature, a big plus.

The paper describing this work, published this month in Science, is titled, "Colossal Ionic Conductivity at Interfaces of Epitaxial ZrO₂:Y₂O₃/SrTiO₃ Heterostructures." Well geez guys, don't dumb it down for us.

This makes it the 2nd time in about a week that I've blogged a major (sounding) breakthrough in hydrogen technology. And just when I was about to dismiss it as a bunch of hot gas.