Today, our energy needs are in large part satisfied by fossil fuels. In the future, renewable energies will play an ever increasing role. For transportation, a renewable fuel will be needed, except for battery vehicles with limited driving range. Hydrogen produced from water and renewable energies could be that fuel. In this respect, H2/air polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) are interesting due to their twice higher energy efficiency compared to a H2-combustion engine. A major drawback of today’s PEFCs is their dependence on platinum, a rare and expensive metal, for catalyzing the PEFC-reactions: hydrogen-oxidation and air-reduction. The latter reaction is by far the slowest and 90 % of the platinum in such a fuel cell is used at the air-reducing cathodes. Based on today’s price for platinum, studies have shown that 40-50% of the material’s cost of a PEFC-stack would be ascribed to the raw platinum metal. Therefore, eliminating platinum from the cathode would drastically reduce the cost of PEFCs and allow a massive utilization of this technology. Recently, several breakthroughs have been reported in the field of non-precious-metal catalysts (NPMCs) made from iron (cobalt), nitrogen and carbon. Their activity for the oxygen reduction has been increased tremendously, making them suddenly interesting catalysts from a performance standpoint. Other less active NPMC catalysts have been reported to be stable for 700 h. In order to bring these NPMCs into real PEFC stacks, the highest activity reported for recent NPMCs will have to be combined with a stable behaviour for thousands of hours in an operating PEFC, as required for transportation application. The aim of the present proposal is to investigate innovative approaches to obtain more durable NPMCs and simultaneously advance the science on the various degradation mechanisms that are specific to these catalysts in fuel-cell environment. Two novel approaches will be investigated. The first will consist in synthesizing new NPMCs by replacing the microporous carbon support by other microporous supports. The second will consist in modifying the surface of pre-existing NPMCs by various methods, in order to strengthen the resistance of Fe-based catalytic sites to demetallation, oxidative attack or anion adsorption. Simultaneously, an experimental methodology will be developed to quantify the importance and rate of each of these degradation mechanisms. Long fuel cell tests under controlled conditions will be coupled with advanced characterization techniques such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Mössbauer spectroscopy and on-line mass spectroscopy.