Boosting the durability of RuO via confinement effect for proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer.

Ruthenium dioxide has attracted extensive attention as a promising catalyst for oxygen evolution reaction in acid. However, the over-oxidation of RuO into soluble HRuO species results in a poor durability, which hinders the practical application of RuO in proton exchange membrane water electrolysis. Here, we report a confinement strategy by enriching a high local concentration of in-situ formed HRuO species, which can effectively suppress the RuO degradation by shifting the redox equilibrium away from the RuO over-oxidation, greatly boosting its durability during acidic oxygen evolution. Therefore, the confined RuO catalyst can continuously operate at 10 mA cm for over 400 h with negligible attenuation, and has a 14.8 times higher stability number than the unconfined RuO catalyst. An electrolyzer cell using the confined RuO catalyst as anode displays a notable durability of 300 h at 500 mA cm and at 60 °C. This work demonstrates a promising design strategy for durable oxygen evolution reaction catalysts in acid via confinement engineering.