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Updated: Sep 19, 2025
Heterogeneous Removal of Water-Soluble Ruthenium Olefin Metathesis Catalyst from Aqueous Media Via Host-Guest Interaction
Published on: August 23, 2018
Oxygen-modified Ru for efficient alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction
Youpeng Cao1, Xingshuai Lv1, Jiao Yang1
1Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering, University of Macau, Macao SAR, 999078, China. huipan@um.edu.mo.
Abstract:
Ruthenium (Ru) is considered a highly promising catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) because of its similar d-band center to platinum and more affordable price. However, the catalytic activities of Ru-based materials remain insufficient for large-scale water electrolysis. In this work, we report that an oxygen-modified Ru catalyst (Ru/C-220) can achieve superior catalytic performance for the HER with an overpotential of 18 mV at 10 mA cm-2, a Tafel slope of 34.9 mV dec-1, and around five-fold increase in mass activity at an overpotential of 100 mV compared to the unannealed catalyst. XPS characterization reveals that the catalyst, after air annealing, exhibits a higher content of lattice-O2- and tetravalent ruthenium (Ru4+), which are key factors contributing to performance enhancement. The underpotential-deposited hydrogen (Hupd) tests and density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations further validate that the enhanced performance of Ru/C-220 stems from oxygen modification, which reduces and optimizes the *H adsorption energy at the Ru active sites. Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) tests confirm the application potential of the oxygen-modified Ru.
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