Electronic modulation of heterostructured MoO supported Ru as robust bifunctional catalyst for overall water splitting

• Published in: CrystEngComm 2023-08, Vol.25 (31), p.448-4486
• Main Authors: Wang, Yangyang, Wen, Xin, Dong, Xiaojing, Xu, Chen, Ma, Wenguang, Sun, Yiqiang, Xu, Bo, Li, Cuncheng
• Format: Article
• ISSN: 1466-8033
• DOI: 10.1039/d3ce00612c

The development of a bifunctional ruthenium-based electrocatalyst that can efficiently and economically drive both the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) remains challenging because ruthenium species can undergo severe agglomeration during preparation which can significantly reduce the catalytic activity. Constructing supported metal catalysts can not only improve the stability of Ru but also improve the catalytic performance by adjusting the electronic structure, which is an effective way to solve the current challenges. In this paper, Ru-loaded MoO 2 /MoO 3 heterostructures (Ru-MoO x ) with oxygen vacancies were successfully synthesized by controlling the annealing temperature. This special structure can effectively tune the electronic structure, enhance the electrical conductivity and increase the active sites, thus improving the catalytic activity of the catalyst. Performance studies have shown that Ru-MoO x exhibits excellent HER and OER performance in alkaline media. And it is not surprising that the overall water decomposition performance of Ru-MoO x is also excellent, requiring only a cell voltage of 1.54 V to reach 10 mA cm −2 . Ru-MoO x heterostructure exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance for overall water splitting.