Ru nanoclusters anchored on boron- and nitrogen-doped carbon for a highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline seawater

Binbin Jiang; Zhen Wang; Hui Zhao; Xie Wang; Xiaoxia Mao; Aijian Huang; Xuehua Zhou; Kui Yin; Kefa Sheng; Junwei Wang

doi:10.1039/d3nr05052a

Ru nanoclusters anchored on boron- and nitrogen-doped carbon for a highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline seawater

Nanoscale. 2023 Dec 14;15(48):19703-19708. doi: 10.1039/d3nr05052a.

Authors

Binbin Jiang¹, Zhen Wang¹, Hui Zhao¹, Xie Wang¹, Xiaoxia Mao¹, Aijian Huang², Xuehua Zhou¹, Kui Yin³, Kefa Sheng¹, Junwei Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Anhui Key Laboratory of Photoelectric-Magnetic Functional Materials, Anhui Key Laboratory of Functional Coordination Compounds, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Anqing Normal University, Anqing 246011, China. wangjunweilotus@163.com.
² School of Electronics Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China. 201811022517@std.uestc.edu.cn.
³ Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, PR China. kuiy@suda.edu.cn.

PMID: 38039054
DOI: 10.1039/d3nr05052a

Abstract

Electrochemical seawater splitting is an intriguing strategy for green hydrogen production. Constructing advanced electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in seawater is extremely demanded for accelerating the sluggish kinetic process. Herein, a Ru nanocluster anchored on boron- and nitrogen-doped carbon (Ru/NBC) catalyst was successfully synthesized for the HER in alkaline/seawater electrolytes. Remarkably, Ru/NBC exhibits outstanding activity and durability, delivering low overpotentials@10 mA cm^-2 in 1.0 M KOH (30 mV) and 1.0 M KOH + seawater electrolyte (35 mV), outperforming Pt/C, Ru/NC, Ru/BC and Ru/C. Additionally, Ru/NBC also provides a high specific activity of 0.093 mA cm^-2_ECSA at an overpotential of 150 mV, which is higher than those of Ru/NC, Ru/BC and Ru/C, respectively. Density functional theory calculation results demonstrate that the Ru-B formed interfacial chemical bond can regulate the electronic structure of Ru active sites of Ru/NBC, which can facilitate the adsorption of water and hydrogen in alkaline media. This work provides a feasible strategy to fabricate outstanding electrocatalysts for the HER in alkaline/alkaline seawater electrolytes.