In Situ Construction of RuS-MoO/MoS Heterostructure for Efficient Hydrogen Evolution in Alkaline Media.

The investigation of an electrocatalyst that integrates both high activity and cost-effectiveness to enhance the sluggish kinetics of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) during water reduction constitutes a significant scientific challenge. Herein, we present an electrocatalyst that RuS nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed onto MoO/MoS nanosheets support to obtain abundant heterojunction interfaces of RuS-MoO/MoS for efficient HER. It enhanced the activity of RuS for alkaline HER to charged interactions between RuS and MoO/MoS with accelerating the rate of water dissociation and optimizing the reaction kinetics. RuS-MoO/MoS heterostructure exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance for alkaline HER, showing a low overpotential of only 51 mV at current density of 10 mA cm and a low Tafel slope of 46 mV dec, outperforming commercial Pt/C and most previously reported alkaline HER electrocatalysts. Moreover, it also has outstanding long-term stability, capable of maintaining current densities of 10 mA cm and 100 mA cm for durations exceeding 500 hours and 100 hours under the chronoamperometric method, respectively. This research offers novel insights and clear guidance for the development of high-performance, cost-effective RuS electrocatalysts.