PIB TrackerA catalyst made of carbon and sulphur reaches 96 per cent of platinum
Three Indian institutes built a metal-free porous framework for zinc-air batteries that held its performance through 120 hours of continuous operation, published in Science Advances.
What happened
- Researchers at S. N. Bose National Centre (Kolkata), INST Mohali and SRM University, Amaravati demonstrated a metal-free organic porous catalyst, TTT-DHTD.
- It achieved about 96 per cent of commercial platinum performance as an air-electrode catalyst in zinc-air batteries.
- Performance was maintained after 120 hours of continuous operation, without degradation or contamination.
- The material is built from carbon, sulphur, nitrogen and hydrogen in an ultra-porous honeycomb-like network.
- Published in Science Advances; led by Dr Pradip Pachfule, Prof Ramendra Sundar Dey and Prof Ranjit Thapa.
For Prelims
- Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR): the cathode reaction in which oxygen takes up electrons. It is the slow step in both fuel cells and metal-air batteries, which is why the catalyst that speeds it determines the whole device’s efficiency.
- Zinc-air battery: zinc anode, oxygen from ambient air as the cathode reactant. Because the cathode material is not carried, theoretical energy density is high; the open difficulties are rechargeability and cycle life.
- Why platinum: it is the benchmark ORR catalyst and among the rarest and costliest metals, concentrated in very few countries. Catalyst cost is a large share of a fuel cell stack, so replacing platinum is the main route to affordable hydrogen energy.
- Covalent organic framework: a crystalline porous solid built from light elements joined by strong covalent bonds, with pore size and chemistry designed in. TTT-DHTD is of this family.
- Catalyst poisoning: metal catalysts lose activity when impurities bind to active sites. A framework of light elements is less vulnerable, which is the significance of performance holding across 120 hours.
- S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences: an autonomous institute of DST at Kolkata, named for the physicist of Bose-Einstein statistics; INST Mohali is DST’s nano science and technology institute.
- Density functional theory: the computational method used to locate the sites where oxygen binds. Simulation of this kind now routinely explains, and increasingly guides, the design of a catalyst before it is synthesised.
- Gravimetric against volumetric energy density: zinc-air leads on energy per unit mass; lithium-ion remains ahead on practical rechargeability. That trade-off is why zinc-air is discussed for stationary storage before vehicles.
For UPSC: An Indian laboratory result that is specific, published and checkable - the kind to carry rather than the market-projection kind. Use it on clean energy and storage technology, on critical mineral dependence and import substitution, on materials science as an answer to scarcity, and on the DST institutional ecosystem that produced it.
What it is NOT: Laboratory performance is not device performance: 96 per cent of platinum on the oxygen reduction reaction does not translate directly into a battery’s round-trip efficiency, and the release gives no cell-level figure. One hundred and twenty hours is a stability demonstration, not a cycle life - no charge-discharge cycle count is reported, and rechargeability is named in the same release as the open problem for zinc-air. No cost comparison is given, although cost is the entire argument. No synthesis yield, scalability assessment or route to manufacture, and no industry partner or timeline.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.12 · GS3.9 · Linkage L1
Anchor
A team from the S. N. Bose National Centre in Kolkata and the Institute of Nano Science and Technology at Mohali, with SRM University at Amaravati, has built a metal-free porous organic catalyst that reaches about 96 per cent of commercial platinum performance as the air-electrode catalyst in a zinc-air battery, and holds it through 120 hours of continuous operation. The work is published in Science Advances.
Substantiation (data)
The material, TTT-DHTD, is assembled from a triazine-based amine and a benzodithiophene dicarbaldehyde into an ultra-porous honeycomb network of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen and hydrogen - all abundant elements. Computational simulation was used to identify the sites at which oxygen molecules attach and react. The oxygen reduction reaction it catalyses is the step that governs efficiency in both zinc-air batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, and it is the step for which platinum is otherwise required.
Position
The strategic point is about materials, not batteries. Platinum is scarce, costly and produced in a handful of countries, and every clean-energy roadmap that runs through hydrogen runs through it. Replacing it with a designed framework of light elements is import substitution achieved by chemistry rather than by mining - and for a country with no platinum reserves and a stated hydrogen ambition, that is a more durable answer than securing supply. The 120-hour stability matters for the same reason: light-element frameworks resist the poisoning that degrades metal catalysts.
Counterpoint
Ninety-six per cent of platinum on one reaction, measured in a laboratory, is some distance from a working cell. No round-trip efficiency, no charge-discharge cycle count and no cost figure appear - and cost is the whole premise. The release itself names rechargeability and cycle life as the unsolved problems of zinc-air batteries, and then reports a stability test rather than a cycling test. Nothing is said about synthesis yield or whether the material can be made at kilogram scale.
Way forward
The next readable milestone is a full cell: a zinc-air battery built with this air-electrode, cycled a few hundred times, with capacity retention reported. After that the question is manufacture - whether a covalent organic framework can be synthesised reproducibly at scale, which is where most such materials stop. An industry partner and a cost per kilowatt-hour would convert a good paper into a technology.
Conclusion
A real result, properly published, from an Indian institutional collaboration - and the release says which journal, which the previous day’s astronomy release did not. Keep the number: 96 per cent of platinum, no platinum.
Deploys into: Clean energy storage and hydrogen · Critical minerals and import substitution · Materials science against scarcity · DST institutions and research collaboration
Ministry of Science & Technology · 2026-10-07 · PRID 2320120 · PIB source ↗