S incorporated RuO2-based nanorings for active and stable water oxidation in acid

Abstract

The design of highly active and stable RuO2-based nanostructures for acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is extremely important for the development of water electrolysis technology, yet remains great challenges. We here demonstrate that the incorporation of S into RuCuO nanorings (NRs) can significantly enhance the acidic OER performance. Experimental investigations show that the incorporation of S can optimize the interaction of Ru and O, and therefore significantly suppresses the dissolution of Ru in acidic condition. The optimized catalyst (SH-RuCuO NRs) displays superior OER performance to the commercial RuO2/C. Impressively, the SH-RuCuO NRs can exhibit significantly enhanced stability for 3,000 cycles of cyclic voltammetry test and more than 250 h chronopotentiometry test at 10 mA·cm−2 in 0.5 M H2SO4. This work highlights a potential strategy for designing active and stable RuO2-based electrocatalysts for acidic OER.