Low-cost and high-efficiency hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst successfully developed

　　Recently, the Membrane Separation and Catalysis Research Group led by Jiang Heqing, a researcher at the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Processes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, cooperated with the Ocean University of China and other units to develop a nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon-supported ruthenium (Ru) monolayer.
Atomic and nanocluster catalysts
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The catalyst exhibits excellent electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance under both basic and acidic conditions, and is able to achieve industrial-scale large current densities at low overpotentials
.

　　The researchers found that Ru in the catalyst mainly exists in the form of ruthenium tetranitride structure and Ru nanoclusters, and there is an electron transfer phenomenon between the two
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The theoretical calculation results show that the strong electronic coupling effect between Ru nanoclusters and Ru single atoms accelerates the dissociation process of water and optimizes the adsorption strength of metal to H+, thereby improving the catalytic hydrogen evolution activity
.
The hierarchical porous structure of the catalyst can also accelerate the transport of reactants to the active site and release the generated hydrogen in time
.

　　In addition, this work also explores the application prospects of the catalyst for practical industrialization.
The developed catalyst has higher mass activity and lower hydrogen production cost than commercial catalysts, demonstrating its application potential in industrial water electrolysis for hydrogen production.
The design of high-throughput, low-cost hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts provides new insights and ideas
.

　　The development of efficient, stable and economical electrocatalysts is very important for the development of hydrogen production from water electrolysis
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Given the advantages of Ru's relatively low cost and suitable metal-hydrogen bond strength, Ru-based electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution have attracted attention, in which the construction of multi-coupling active sites has been considered as an efficient way to promote hydrogen evolution kinetics
.
However, when improving the quality and activity of the catalyst, how to simultaneously achieve high-throughput hydrogen production has become a bottleneck problem in catalyst design
.