@article{Huo2025, 
author = {Mengtian Huo and Yifan Li and Qianyu Li and Xinye Zhang and Xinran Sun and Huiying Wang and Zihao Xing and Jinfa Chang},
title = {Promoting mechanism of the Ru-integration effect in RuCo bimetallic nanoparticles for enhancing water splitting performance},
year = {2025},
journal = {Nano Research},
volume = {18},
number = {3},
pages = {94907243},
keywords = {RuCo bimetal, water splitting, promoting mechanism, integration effect, in-situ Raman spectra},
url = {https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.26599/NR.2025.94907243},
doi = {10.26599/NR.2025.94907243},
abstract = {The development of electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is crucial for sustainable energy and environmental initiatives. This work establishes an atomically-dispersed Ru-based model to investigate the promoting mechanism by the Ru-Integration effect in RuCo bimetallic nanoparticles supported on nitrogen-doped carbon (RuCo@NC). Specially, the Ru content in RuCo@NC plays a vital role for both HER and OER. The optimized catalyst shows an outstanding performance, requiring only 217 and 97 mV overpotential to reach a current density of 10 mA·cm−2 for OER and HER respectively in alkaline conditions. Combined with advanced characterizations such as spherical aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, in-situ Raman spectroscopy, and density functional theory calculations, it is found that Ru plays multiple crucial roles: (1) Ru restricts the growth of large Co NPs, while the small-sized Co NPs facilitate the formation of carbon nanotubes, which significantly enhances the mass/electron transfer; (2) Ru not only tunes the surface properties of Co but also acts as an active site for HER. As a result, when using RuCo@NC as an overall water splitting catalyst, it only needs a potential of 1.62 V to reach a current density of 100 mA·cm−2. This work offers valuable insights into designing Ru-based electrocatalysts for water splitting.}
}