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Trace ruthenium promoted dual-reconstruction of CoFeP@C/NF for activating overall water splitting performance beyond precious-metals

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Abstract

At present, Ru dopants mainly enhance electrocatalytic performance by inducing strain, vacancy, local electron difference, and synergy. Surprisingly, this work innovatively proposes that trace Ru atoms induce dual-reconstruction of phosphide by regulating the electronic configuration and proportion of Co-P/Co-O species, and ultimately activate superb electrocatalytic performance. Specifically, Ru-CoFeP@C/nickel foam (NF) is reconstructed to generate hydrophilic Co(OH)2 nanosheets during the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) process, further accelerating the alkaline HER kinetics of phosphide. And the as-formed CoOOH during the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) process directly accelerates the oxygen overflow efficiency. As expected, the overpotential at 100 mA·cm−2 (η100) values of the reconstructed Ru-CoFeP@C/NF are 0.104 and 0.257 V for HER and OER, which are greatly lower than that of Pt/C-NF and RuO2-NF benchmarks, respectively. This work provides guidance for the construction of high-performance catalysts for HER and OER dual reconstruction. This work provides a new idea for the optimization of catalyst structure and electrocatalytic performance.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52072197 and 21971132), the 111 Project of China (No. D20017), Outstanding Youth Foundation of Shandong Province, China (No. ZR2019JQ14), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (No. ZR2022QE098), Major Scientific and Technological Innovation Project (No. 2019JZZY020405), Major Basic Research Program of Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province under Grant (No. ZR2020ZD09), Qingdao Postdoctoral Researcher Applied Research Project (No. 04030431060100), and Postdoctoral Innovation Project of Shandong Province (No. SDCX-ZG-20220307).

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  1. Jinhong Ren and Jie Liu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environment and Safety Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266042, China

    Jinhong Ren, Yunmei Du, Shuangshuang Li, Mengmeng Wang, Bo Yang & Lei Wang

  2. College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Key Laboratory of Eco-chemical Engineering, Key Laboratory of Optic-electric Sensing and Analytical Chemistry of Life Science, Taishan Scholar Advantage and Characteristic Discipline Team of Eco Chemical Process and Technology, Qingdao, 266042, China

    Jie Liu, Lei Wang & Yanru Liu

  3. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266042, China

    Bin Li

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  1. Jinhong Ren
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Trace ruthenium promoted dual-reconstruction of CoFeP@C/NF for activating overall water splitting performance beyond precious-metals

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Ren, J., Liu, J., Du, Y. et al. Trace ruthenium promoted dual-reconstruction of CoFeP@C/NF for activating overall water splitting performance beyond precious-metals. Nano Res. 16, 10810–10821 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5825-5

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