Locking the lattice oxygen in RuO2 to stabilize highly active Ru sites in acidic water oxidation

Xinyu Ping; Yongduo Liu; Lixia Zheng; Yang Song; Lin Guo; Siguo Chen; Zidong Wei

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-46815-6

Locking the lattice oxygen in RuO₂ to stabilize highly active Ru sites in acidic water oxidation

Nat Commun. 2024 Mar 20;15(1):2501. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-46815-6.

Authors

Xinyu Ping^#¹, Yongduo Liu^#¹, Lixia Zheng¹, Yang Song¹, Lin Guo², Siguo Chen³, Zidong Wei¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Chemical Power Sources (SKL-ACPS), Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Catalytic Materials and Reaction Engineering, SINOPEC Research Institute of Petroleum Processing Co., Ltd., Beijing, China.
³ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Chemical Power Sources (SKL-ACPS), Chongqing University, Chongqing, China. csg810519@126.com.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Ruthenium dioxide is presently the most active catalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in acidic media but suffers from severe Ru dissolution resulting from the high covalency of Ru-O bonds triggering lattice oxygen oxidation. Here, we report an interstitial silicon-doping strategy to stabilize the highly active Ru sites of RuO₂ while suppressing lattice oxygen oxidation. The representative Si-RuO₂-0.1 catalyst exhibits high activity and stability in acid with a negligible degradation rate of ~52 μV h^-1 in an 800 h test and an overpotential of 226 mV at 10 mA cm^-2. Differential electrochemical mass spectrometry (DEMS) results demonstrate that the lattice oxygen oxidation pathway of the Si-RuO₂-0.1 was suppressed by ∼95% compared to that of commercial RuO₂, which is highly responsible for the extraordinary stability. This work supplied a unique mentality to guide future developments on Ru-based oxide catalysts' stability in an acidic environment.

Abstract

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