Fuel cells constitute an attractive power-generation technology that conver
ts chemical energy directly and with high efficiency into electricity while
causing little pollution. Most fuel cells require hydrogen as the fuel, bu
t viable near-term applications will need to use the more readily available
hydrocarbons, such as methane. Present-day demonstration power plants and
planned fuel-cell electric vehicles therefore include a reformer that conve
rts hydrocarbon fuel into hydrogen. Operating fuel cells directly on hydroc
arbons would obviously eliminate the need for such a reformer and improve e
fficiency. In the case of polymer-electrolyte fuel cells, which have been s
tudied for vehicle applications, the direct use of methanol fuel has been r
eported, but resulted in fuel permeating the electrolyte(1,2). Solid oxide
fuel cells-promising candidates for stationary power generation-can also us
e hydrocarbon fuel directly to generate energy, but this mode of operation
resulted in either carbon deposition at high temperatures or poor power out
put at low operating temperatures(3-5). Here we report the direct electroch
emical oxidation of methane in solid oxide fuel cells that generate power d
ensities up to 0.37W cm(-2) at 650 degrees C. This performance is comparabl
e to that of fuel cells using hydrogen(6,7) and is achieved by using ceria-
containing anodes and low operating temperatures to avoid carbon deposition
. We expect that the incorporation of more advanced cathodes would further
improve the performance of our cells, making this:solid oxide fuel cell a p
romising candidate for practical and efficient fuel-cell applications.