On October 1^th, 2024, Zhao's research group at Shenzhen University have published research paper titled "Synergistic Engineering of Dopant and Support of Ru Oxide Catalyst Enables Ultrahigh Performance for Acidic Oxygen Evolution " in Advanced Functional Materials. They designed Ce-doped RuO₂nanoparticles supported on Co-N-C material (Ce@RuO₂/CoNC) for acidic OER. The studies show that Ce-doping and Co-N-C support synergistically enhance the activity and stability of Ru oxide by optimizing the free energies of OER intermediates and suppressing the dissolution of Ru. It is demonstrated that Ce@RuO₂/CoNC delivers a super low overpotential of 150 mV and an excellent stability of 1000 h at 10 mA cm⁻², outperforming most previously reported Ru-based catalysts. Wu Bin, Liqiang Mai and Wei Zhao are the corresponding authors. The first author is Dr Felix. Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University is the first unit.

Active and robust electrocatalysts for acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are of crucial importance for efficient proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer (PEM-WE). In summary, an efficient Ce@RuO₂/CoNC electrocatalyst was designed using a synergistic approach of heteroatom doping and catalyst support. The incorporation of Ce into RuO₂ensured that Ru maintained its charge balance and that the Ru-O bond in the Ru-O-Ce structural unit was stronger than that in the Ru-O-Ru structural unit, which helped maintain the durability of the surface structure and inhibited the dissolution of Ru surface. Extensive physical and chemical characterizations demonstrate CoNC catalyst support can form a potent chemical bond with integrated Ce@RuO₂nanoparticles, allowing them to be permanently incorporated into the support and offering Ce@RuO₂electrocatalyst more resistance to degradation during OER. The designed Ce@RuO₂/CoNC catalyst shows superior OER performance with high mass activity of 2365.5 A g⁻¹_Ruat 1.5 V (v.s. RHE). The as-synthesized catalyst ran steadily for 1000 h at 200 mA cm⁻² in an acidic PEM-WE device. Given its superior activity and strong stability, the designed Ce@RuO₂/CoNC would present a new avenue for the widespread use of PEM water electrolyzers.

This project is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21972096) and the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Program (JCYJ20190808150615285).

Article link: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202408714