Niu Yingying, Tian Zhengbin, Wang Wenquan, Deng Xiaohui, Zhang Botao, Wang Guang-Hui
College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China.
Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266101, China.
Nanoscale. 2025 Jun 19;17(24):14750-14758. doi: 10.1039/d5nr00721f.
Carbon-supported Ru clusters have been recognized as promising electrocatalysts for alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), but their catalytic activity is still limited by the weak metal-carbon interaction or the blockage of active sites. Herein, we report a facile method by which RuN clusters are anchored on hierarchically porous N-doped carbon spheres (Ru/NCS) pyrolysis of the polymer precursor of NCS containing Ru ions. Experimental results indicate that the interaction between Ru species and N-doped carbon leads to the formation of ultrafine RuN clusters with uniform distribution on NCS and also optimizes the Ru-H/Ru-OH bond strength, thereby promoting the rate-determining Volmer step in alkaline HER. Furthermore, the open porous structure of the NCS support is beneficial for the transport of gaseous products. Consequently, the as-synthesized Ru/NCS exhibits excellent HER performance with an overpotential of 4 mV, a low Tafel slope of 26 mV dec, a high mass activity of 6.24 A mg Ru at an overpotential of 50 mV, and long-term stability over 1000 h at 10 mA cm with negligible voltage increase, outperforming state-of-the-art commercial Pt/C and Ru/C benchmarks.
碳负载的钌簇已被认为是用于碱性析氢反应（HER）的有前景的电催化剂，但其催化活性仍受弱金属 - 碳相互作用或活性位点阻塞的限制。在此，我们报道了一种简便的方法，通过该方法，RuN簇锚定在分级多孔的氮掺杂碳球（Ru/NCS）上，该方法是对含Ru离子的NCS聚合物前驱体进行热解。实验结果表明，Ru物种与氮掺杂碳之间的相互作用导致在NCS上形成分布均匀的超细RuN簇，并且还优化了Ru - H/Ru - OH键强度，从而促进了碱性HER中速率决定的Volmer步骤。此外，NCS载体的开放多孔结构有利于气态产物的传输。因此，合成的Ru/NCS表现出优异的HER性能，过电位为4 mV，低塔菲尔斜率为26 mV dec，在50 mV过电位下高质量活性为6.24 A mg Ru，并且在10 mA cm下超过1000 h的长期稳定性，电压增加可忽略不计，优于目前最先进的商业Pt/C和Ru/C基准。
