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Updated: Aug 28, 2025

Heterogeneous Removal of Water-Soluble Ruthenium Olefin Metathesis Catalyst from Aqueous Media Via Host-Guest Interaction
Published on: August 23, 2018
Reversible hydrogen spillover in Ru-WO3-x enhances hydrogen evolution activity in neutral pH water splitting
Jiadong Chen1,2, Chunhong Chen1, Minkai Qin1
1Advanced Materials and Catalysis Group, Center of Chemistry for Frontier Technologies, State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Institute of Catalysis, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310028, PR China.
Abstract:
Noble metal electrocatalysts (e.g., Pt, Ru, etc.) suffer from sluggish kinetics of water dissociation for the electrochemical reduction of water to molecular hydrogen in alkaline and neutral pH environments. Herein, we found that an integration of Ru nanoparticles (NPs) on oxygen-deficient WO3-x manifested a 24.0-fold increase in hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity compared with commercial Ru/C electrocatalyst in neutral electrolyte. Oxygen-deficient WO3-x is shown to possess large capacity for storing protons, which could be transferred to the Ru NPs under cathodic potential. This significantly increases the hydrogen coverage on the surface of Ru NPs in HER and thus changes the rate-determining step of HER on Ru from water dissociation to hydrogen recombination.
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