Fullerene Lattice‐Confined Ru Nanoparticles and Single Atoms Synergistically Boost Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Abstract

The design and construction of electrocatalysts with high efficiency, low cost and large current output suitable for industrial hydrogen production is the current development trend for water electrolysis. Herein, a lattice‐confined in situ reduction effect of the 3D crystalline fullerene network (CFN) is developed to trap Ru nanoparticle (NP) and single atom (SA) via a solvothermal‐pyrolysis process. The optimized product (RuNP‐RuSA@CFN‐800) exhibits outstanding electrocatalytic performance for alkaline hydrogen evolution reactions. To deliver a current density of 10 mA cm−2, the RuNP‐RuSA@CFN‐800 merely required an overpotential of 33 mV, along with a robust electrocatalytic durability for 1400 h. Even at large current densities of 500 and 1000 mA cm−2, the overpotentials are only 154 and 251 mV, respectively. Density function theorey calculation results indicated that the electronic synergetic effect between Ru NP and SA enable to regulate the charge distribution of RuNP‐RuSA@CFN‐800 and reduce the Gibbs free energy of intermediate species for water dissociation process, thereby accelerating the hydrogen evolution process. Moreover, the robust CFN matrix render this strategy patulous to other transition metals, e.g., Cu, Ni, and Co. The present study provides a new clue for the construction of novel electrocatalyst in the field of energy storage and conversion.

Reconstructing Oxygen‐Deficient Zirconia with Ruthenium Catalyst on Atomic‐Scale Interfaces toward Hydrogen Production

“…The fitting result of the Ru-EXAFS spectrum showed a peak position of approximately 1.9 Å corresponding to the Ru-O bond in the first shell, while the relatively sharp peak around 2.5 Å was attributed to the Ru-Zr and Ru-Ru bonds corresponding to the Ru-cationic bond (Figure S16, Supporting Information). [39] Notably, the Ru-Zr bond peak was formed by oxygen vacancies, as supported by DFT calculations in Figure 4j that perfectly matched the cohesive energy and their crystal structure. The high coordination number of the Ru-Ru bonds was partially attributed to the presence of Ru cluster particles.…”

C60 Fullerenol to Stabilize and Activate Ru Nanoparticles for Highly Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Reaction in Alkaline Media

“…Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) measurement (Table S1) for Ru−OC 60 -300 showed that the content of Ru was as high as 38.6 wt %. Nevertheless, morphology examination by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed that the Ru was densely and homogeneously loaded on the carbon substrate in the form of small nanoparticles (d mean = 2.81 nm) (Figure 1a,b), which can be ascribed to the spatial confinement effect of the C 60 cage 41 and the immobilization of O atoms. The high loading and high dispersion of Ru NPs will be conducive to the exposure of a large number of Ru active sites.…”

Rational Design of Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Electrocatalysts for Commercial Alkaline Water Electrolysis

“…[ 124 ] In addition to this, Feng et al exploited the electronic synergy between Ru nanoparticles (Ru‐NP) and single atoms (Ru‐SA) to optimize the electronic structure of both active sites while constructing a dual active site. [ 125 ] It makes Ru‐NP the main contributor to the kinetic water dissociation process, while Ru‐SA mainly promotes the formation of hydrogen. It achieves an excellent performance of 1000 mA cm −2 with an overpotential of only 251 mV.…”