@article{Duan2023, 
author = {Mingxiu Duan and Tie Shu and Jingwei Li and Daliang Zhang and Li-Yong Gan and Ke Xin Yao and Qiang Yuan},
title = {Boosting alkaline hydrogen evolution performance by constructing ultrasmall Ru clusters/Na+, K+-decorated porous carbon composites},
year = {2023},
journal = {Nano Research},
volume = {16},
number = {7},
pages = {8836-8844},
keywords = {electrocatalysts, hydrogen evolution reaction, decorated porous carbon, ultrasmall Ru clusters, solar-to-hydrogen},
url = {https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.1007/s12274-023-5558-5},
doi = {10.1007/s12274-023-5558-5},
abstract = {The construction of efficient and durable electrocatalysts with highly dispersed metal clusters and hydrophilic surface for alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) remains a great challenge. Herein, we prepared hydrophilic nanocomposites of Ru clusters (~ 1.30 nm) anchored on Na+, K+-decorated porous carbon (Ru/Na+, K+-PC) through hydrothermal method and subsequent annealing treatment at 500 °C. The Ru/Na+, K+-PC exhibits ultralow overpotential of 7 mV at 10 mA·cm−2, mass activity of 15.7 A·mgRu−1 at 100 mV, and long-term durability of 20,000 cycles potential cycling and 200 h chronopotentiometric measurement with a negligible decrease in activity, much superior to benchmarked commercial Pt/C. Density functional theory based calculations show that the energy barrier of H–OH bond breaking is efficiently reduced due to the presence of Na and K ions, thus favoring the Volmer step. Furthermore, the Ru/Na+, K+-PC effectively employs solar energy for obtaining H2 in both alkaline water and seawater electrolyzer. This finding provides a new strategy to construct high-performance and cost-effective alkaline HER electrocatalyst.}
}