Patent 7498097 was granted and assigned to Panasonic on March, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In order to prevent the crossover of an organic fuel such as methanol in a fuel cell and to exhibit excellent electricity generation characteristics without impairing the utilization efficiency of the fuel, at least either of (1) a discontinuous catalyst layer being formed on a surface of an anode catalyst layer and having a higher density (existence probability) of platinum type catalyst than the anode catalyst layer and (2) an electrolyte polymer layer is formed at the interface between the anode catalyst layer and a polymer electrolyte membrane.