Electronic tuning of RuO₂ polarizes metal-oxygen redox for proton exchange membrane water electrolysis.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41027878.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-63721-7 and PMC identifier 12484939.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
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Abstract
The metal-oxygen redox behavior governs the performance of transition metal oxides in many electrochemical reactions, especially for RuO<sub>2</sub> with the activity-stability paradox in the anode oxygen evolution reaction of proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers. Herein, we modulate the electronic structure of RuO<sub>2</sub> near the Fermi level to promote reversible Ru redox while suppressing the oxidative release of lattice oxygen. As a result, the RuO<sub>2</sub> integrated with electron-rich p-block metals Sb achieves an overpotential of 220 mV and long-term operational stability of 1200 h at 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>. The assembled proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers can operate steadily over 100 h at 100, 500, and 1000 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>. Further advanced in-situ characterizations reveal the more reversible and milder Ru redox and the passivated lattice oxygen reactivity, which suppresses drastic structural changes of RuO<sub>2</sub> during the oxygen evolution reaction. This work highlights the importance of engineering metal-oxygen redox behavior and provides insights for designing high-performance catalysts for energy conversion and storage devices.