Self-Optimized Interfacial Co-O-Ru Motifs of Hollow Nanotube Composites Trigger Interfacial Lattice Oxygen Participation and Diffusion.

Zhang, Haijuan; Xu, Hengyue; Chen, Jie; Guan, Daqin; Hu, Zhiwei; Xu, Xiaomin; Lin, Zezhou; Sun, Hainan et al. · ACS Nano · 2025

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Lattice oxygen participation mechanism (LOM) can break the conventional adsorption scaling limitations to boost electrocatalysis performance and has been utilized to design promising single-phase oxides that generally show favorable bulk oxygen-ion diffusion capability. In pure-phase materials, bulk oxygen vacancies could act as oxygen-ion diffusion channels, implying rich bulk oxygen vacancies at the interfaces of hybrid-phase composites may further boost LOM. Here, by designing hybrid Co<sub>2.5</sub>Ru<sub>0.5</sub>O<sub><i>x</i></sub> hollow nanotubes with rich two-phase interfaces, we report a phenomenon of interfacial LOM. Such hollow nanotubes (∼10 nm wall thickness), composed of spinel Co<sub>3</sub>O<sub>4-<i>x</i></sub>-rutile RuO<sub>2-<i>x</i></sub> interfaces, exhibiting a low overpotential of 430 mV and a long-term stability of 1000 h at 500 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> for oxygen-evolving reaction (OER) in near-industrial alkaline solutions (6 M KOH). The constructed anion exchange membrane electrolyzer requires only 1.82 V to achieve a 1 A cm<sup>-2</sup>. Interfacial Co/Ru atomic interactions trigger Co-O-Ru motifs to undergo self-optimization during OER through oxidizing Co/Ru ions and narrowing bond length to create short synergetic active sites, while interfacial oxygen vacancies act as ion-diffusion pathways. Combined mechanism experiments and computations unravel the exceptional interfacial LOM processes. Additionally, the hollow nanotube structure promotes OH<sup>-</sup> adsorption, serving as a beneficial driving force for interfacial LOM.