Self-activatable carbon nanotube@ruthenium-catechol coordination complex for hydrogen evolution reaction

Chenzhi Wu; Tong Wu; Zhenbin Tang; Juguo Dai; Birong Zeng; Yiting Xu; Guorong Chen; Weiang Luo; Conghui Yuan; Lizong Dai

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/ac7b34

Self-activatable carbon nanotube@ruthenium-catechol coordination complex for hydrogen evolution reaction

Nanotechnology. 2022 Jul 11;33(40). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac7b34.

Authors

Chenzhi Wu¹, Tong Wu¹, Zhenbin Tang¹, Juguo Dai¹, Birong Zeng¹, Yiting Xu¹, Guorong Chen¹, Weiang Luo¹, Conghui Yuan¹, Lizong Dai¹

Affiliation

¹ Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Fire Retardant Materials, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 35732158
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac7b34

Abstract

We report a simple metal ion-catechol coordination strategy to coat ruthenium-catechol polymer complex (TAC-Ru) on the surface of carbon nanotubes (CNT) to form a core-shell structure (abbreviated as CNT@TAC-Ru). This is achieved by firstly polymerizing catechol and boronic acid monomers on the surface of CNT to form a boronate ester polymer (BP) shell. Then, Ru³⁺is used to etch the BP shell, and cleave the dynamic boronate ester bond, leading to the formation of a CNT@ruthenium-catechol coordination complex based on the coordinative efficiency of the catechol group. The electrocatalytic property of the CNT@TAC-Ru composite can be activated through electrochemical cycling treatment. The as-activated CNT@TAC-Ru exhibits evidently improved hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance with an overpotential of 10 mV in 1.0 M KOH at a current density of 10 mA cm^-2, which is better than that of commercial Pt/C (32 mV). And the long-term stability is also desirable. This work provides a pyrolysis-free method to form metal-polymer-carbon composite with high HER performance under the alkaline condition.

Keywords: coordination; core@shell; hydrogen evolution reaction; pyrolysis-free; self-activation.