Boakye, F.O.; Harrath, K.; Zhang, D.; You, Y.; Zhang, W.; Wang, Z.; Zhang, H.; Zhu, J.; Long, J.; Zhu, J.; Yasin, G.; Owusu, K.A.; Tabish, M.; Zhang, L.; Wang, D.; Shi, X.; Jiang, Z.; Wu, B.; Mai, L.; Zhao, W.: Synergistic Engineering of Dopant and Support of Ru Oxide Catalyst Enables Ultrahigh Performance for Acidic Oxygen Evolution. Advanced Functional Materials 34 (2024), p. 2408714/1-12
10.1002/adfm.202408714
Abstract:
Active and robust electrocatalysts for acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are of crucial importance for efficient proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer (PEM-WE). Ruthenium (Ru) oxide has attracted considerable attention due to its high activity. However, the unsatisfying stability of Ru oxide in acidic OER environments hinders the application. Here, Ce-doped RuO2 nanoparticles are designed and supported on Co-N-C material (Ce@RuO2/CoNC) for acidic OER. It is demonstrated that Ce@RuO2/CoNC delivers a super low overpotential of 150 mV and an excellent stability of 1000 h at 10 mA cm−2, outperforming most previously reported Ru-based catalysts. The mass activity is estimated as 2365.5 AgRu−1 at 1.5 V (vs RHE), representing ≈2× advance compared to the best prior study. Furthermore, applied in a single-cell PEM-WE device, it can steadily operate for 1000 h at 200 mA cm−2. The studies show that Ce-doping and Co-N-C support synergistically enhance the activity and stability of Ru oxide by optimizing the free energies of OER intermediates and suppressing the dissolution of Ru.