Fullerene‐Buffered Electron Shuttle of Ru/RuO<sub>2</sub> with Switchable Active Sites Enables Robust and Efficient Bifunctional Alkaline Water Electrolysis
Abstract
AbstractDeveloping highly‐efficient and robust bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall water splitting (OWS) is desirable, but it confronts long‐term challenge in the local structural reconstruction of catalyst during the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reaction (HER and OER). As inspired by the stable acid–base buffer system in human life, here we construct an electron buffer system to well address the key issue of structural reconstruction, in which the charge‐buffered fullerene renders Ru‐based active species to be reversibly shuttled between Ru and RuO2 during HER and OER. Consequently, the as‐prepared Ru‐RuO2/C60‐x catalyst exhibits overpotentials of merely 7 and 194 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for HER and OER in alkaline conditions, respectively. The photovoltaic‐driven OWS device with a solar‐to‐hydrogen (STH) efficiency of 18.9% and an anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) system with good robustness was fabricated based on Ru‐RuO2/C60‐x. It was unraveled by in situ/operando spectroscopy and theoretical calculation that the significantly promoted performance of water electrolysis benefits from the fullerene‐based electron shuttle effect on inhibition of structural reconstruction and electronic structural modulation of active sites as well as adsorption energy of the reaction intermediates. Our work may open an avenue to develop efficient and robust bifunctional electrocatalyst for promising industrial water electrolysis.
Article Details
Authors (19)
Ying Wang
Jizhang Wang
State Key Laboratory of Catalysis Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy Dalian Liaoning 116023 China
Jilong Xu
National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Anhui Industrial Innovation Research Institute of Advanced Optoelectronic Materials and Systems University of Science and Technology of China Hefei Anhui People's Republic of China
Xianlin Qu
Liping Lin
Lu Zhao
Beijing Key Laboratory of Materials Utilization of Nonmetallic Minerals and Solid Wastes, National Laboratory of Mineral Materials, School of Materials Science and Technology
Qingqing Liu
School of Engineering
Ying Wei
Xu Li
Qunzhi Ma
School of Materials Science and Engineering Shaanxi University of Science and Technology Xi'an 710021 China
Jun Zhang
Wenjun Fan
State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics
Bin Wu
Xingang Kong
School of Materials Science and Engineering Shaanxi University of Science and Technology Xi'an 710021 China
Jianfeng Huang
National Innovation Center for Industry-Education Integration of Energy Storage Technology, Institute of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Yi Wang
Yifan Ye
Advanced Light Source
Yongqiang Feng
School of Materials Science and Engineering Shaanxi University of Science and Technology Xi'an 710021 China
Fuxiang Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhongshan Road 457, Dalian 116023, P. R. China