Design of RuOx Electrocatalysts Containing Metallic Ru on the Surface to Accelerate the Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Yakang Li; Jiaxin Guo; Ruguang Wang; Yang Zhao; Quanlu Wang; Jisi Li; Tao Ling

doi:10.1021/acsami.4c19204

Design of RuO_x Electrocatalysts Containing Metallic Ru on the Surface to Accelerate the Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2025 Jan 27. doi: 10.1021/acsami.4c19204. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yakang Li¹, Jiaxin Guo¹, Ruguang Wang¹, Yang Zhao¹, Quanlu Wang¹, Jisi Li¹, Tao Ling¹

Affiliation

¹ Key Laboratory for Advanced Ceramics and Machining Technology of Ministry of Education, Institute of New-Energy, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.

PMID: 39870571
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c19204

Abstract

The development of water splitting technology in alkaline medium requires the exploration of electrocatalysts superior to Pt/C to boost the alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Ruthenium oxides with strong water dissociation ability are promising candidates; however, the lack of hydrogen combination sites immensely limits their performance. Herein, we reported a unique RuO_x catalyst with metallic Ru on its surface through a simple cation exchange method. We demonstrated that the formation of metallic Ru on RuO_x greatly enhances the interaction between the catalyst and adsorbed hydrogen (*H), resulting in extremely high HER activity in alkaline media. Moreover, we proposed the potential of zero charge (E_pzc) as a descriptor of ruthenium-base catalysts for alkaline HER for the first time and revealed that the existence of metallic Ru optimizes the E_pzc of RuO_x toward the hydrogen region. As a result, the designed RuO_x catalyst achieves an overpotential of only 18 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm^-2. Furthermore, RuO_x requires 1.80 V to reach 800 mA cm^-2 in the anion exchange membrane water electrolyzer, outperforming the benchmark Pt/C.

Keywords: alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction; anion exchange membrane water electrolyzer; hydrogen combination sites; metallic Ru; ruthenium dioxide catalyst.