The development of efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reactions is an extremely important area for the development of green and clean energy. In this work, a precursor material was successfully prepared via electrodeposition of two doping elements to construct a co-doped cobalt hydroxide electrocatalyst (Ru-Co(OH)2-Se). This approach was demonstrated to be an effective way to improve the performance of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The experimental results show that the material exhibited a smaller impedance value and a larger electrochemically active surface area. In the HER process, the overpotential was only 109 mV at a current density of 10 mA/cm2. In addition, the doping of selenium and ruthenium effectively prevented the corrosion of the catalysts, with the (Ru-Co(OH)2-Se) material showing no significant reduction in the catalytic performance after 50 h. This synergistic approach through elemental co-doping demonstrated good results in the HER process.
Keywords: HER; electrodeposition; electrolytic water; elemental doping; material compounding.