With the aim to tremendously bring down the cost involved in manufacturing the traditional cells; Chinese scientists have developed a fuel cell using alkaline membrane. The cost would be definitely reduced since less expensive metals would be needed.

A fuel cell is basically a device that produces electricity from fuel and nearly all of them use membranes that are acidic. They come with associated parts made of platinum or other rare and expensive metals.

It was informed in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Lin Zhuang and his colleagues at Wuhan University's chemistry department that they were successful in developing a membrane that utilized silver and nickel.

They informed via a statement, “Although the power output of the prototype is modest, the researchers see it as the first step in a new generation of low-cost fuel cells.”