A RuCoBO Nanocomposite for Highly Efficient and Stable Electrocatalytic Seawater Splitting

Le-Wei Shen; Yong Wang; Jiang-Bo Chen; Ge Tian; Kang-Yi Xiong; Christoph Janiak; David Cahen; Xiao-Yu Yang

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04668

A RuCoBO Nanocomposite for Highly Efficient and Stable Electrocatalytic Seawater Splitting

Nano Lett. 2023 Feb 8;23(3):1052-1060. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04668. Epub 2023 Jan 27.

Authors

Le-Wei Shen¹, Yong Wang¹, Jiang-Bo Chen¹, Ge Tian¹, Kang-Yi Xiong¹, Christoph Janiak², David Cahen³, Xiao-Yu Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, and International School of Materials Science & Engineering, and School of Materials Science & Engineering, and Shenzhen Research Institute, and Joint Laboratory for Marine Advanced Materials in Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Wuhan University of Technology, 430070 Wuhan, Hubei, China.
² Institut für Anorganische Chemie und Strukturchemie, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 40204 Düsseldorf, Germany.
³ Department of Chemistry, and Bar-Ilan Institute for Nanotechnology & Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002 Ramat Gan, and Department of Molecular Chemistry & Materials Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel.

PMID: 36706048
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04668

Abstract

Efficient and stable electrocatalysts are critically needed for the development of practical overall seawater splitting. The nanocomposite of RuCoBO has been rationally engineered to be an electrocatalyst that fits these criteria. The study has shown that a calcinated RuCoBO-based nanocomposite (Ru₂Co₁BO-350) exhibits an extremely high catalytic activity for H₂ and O₂ production in alkaline seawater (overpotentials of 14 mV for H₂ evolution and 219 mV for O₂ evolution) as well as a record low cell voltage (1.466 V@10 mA cm^-2) and long-term stability (230 h @50 mA cm^-2 and @100 mA cm^-2) for seawater splitting. The results show that surface reconstruction of Ru₂Co₁BO-350 occurs during hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction, which leads to the high activity and stability of the catalyst. The reconstructed surface is highly resistant to Cl^- corrosion. The investigation suggests that a new strategy exists for the design of high-performance Ru-based electrocatalysts that resist anodic corrosion during seawater splitting.

Keywords: Ru-based electrocatalysts; directed transformation; electrocatalytic seawater splitting; multifunctional sites; surface reconstruction.