The initial design concepts for fuel cells can be traced back to 1839, when the British chemist William Robert Grove was inspired by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle, who electrolyzed water to hydrogen and oxygen, and designed a device that can recombine hydrogen and oxygen into water to generate electricity. In February 1839, Grove publicly reported and illustrated the device using platinum plates as electrodes and dilute sulfuric acid as electrolyte, which has been regarded as the prototype of the fuel cell (Brusso in IEEE Industry Applications Magazine 27:8–13, 2021). Fifty years later, the term ‘fuel cell’ was firstly proposed by British chemist Ludwig Mond and Charles Langer in 1889. They used platinum black electrodes with a large specific surface area and the porous ceramic separator impregnated with dilute sulfuric acid, which improved the cell performance to an impressive level (3.5 mA cm−2 @ 0.73 V). In 1894, the German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald demonstrated the unparalleled thermodynamic efficiency and environmental friendliness of fuel cells, marking the establishment of the basic theoretical framework of fuel cell thermodynamics.