Reversible hydrogen spillover in Ru-WO<sub>3-x</sub> enhances hydrogen evolution activity in neutral pH water splitting.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36104336.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-33007-3 and PMC identifier 9474501.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Noble metal electrocatalysts (e.g., Pt, Ru, etc.) suffer from sluggish kinetics of water dissociation for the electrochemical reduction of water to molecular hydrogen in alkaline and neutral pH environments. Herein, we found that an integration of Ru nanoparticles (NPs) on oxygen-deficient WO<sub>3-x</sub> manifested a 24.0-fold increase in hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity compared with commercial Ru/C electrocatalyst in neutral electrolyte. Oxygen-deficient WO<sub>3-x</sub> is shown to possess large capacity for storing protons, which could be transferred to the Ru NPs under cathodic potential. This significantly increases the hydrogen coverage on the surface of Ru NPs in HER and thus changes the rate-determining step of HER on Ru from water dissociation to hydrogen recombination.