Abstract
Single atom catalyst, which contains isolated metal atoms singly dispersed on supports, has great potential for achieving high activity and selectivity in hetero-catalysis and electrocatalysis. However, the activity and stability of single atoms and their interaction with support still remains a mystery. Here we show a stable single atomic ruthenium catalyst anchoring on the surface of cobalt iron layered double hydroxides, which possesses a strong electronic coupling between ruthenium and layered double hydroxides. With 0.45 wt.% ruthenium loading, the catalyst exhibits outstanding activity with overpotential 198 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm−2 and a small Tafel slope of 39 mV dec−1 for oxygen evolution reaction. By using operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy, it is disclosed that the isolated single atom ruthenium was kept under the oxidation states of 4+ even at high overpotential due to synergetic electron coupling, which endow exceptional electrocatalytic activity and stability simultaneously.
Highlights
Single atom catalyst, which contains isolated metal atoms singly dispersed on supports, has great potential for achieving high activity and selectivity in hetero-catalysis and electrocatalysis
The oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which represents a key half-reaction in these important energy related processes, has enormous impact on the overall energy efficiency yet suffers with sluggish kinetics[4,5,6]
In spite of higher OER activity, the RuO2 catalysts are unstable under high anodic potentials and tend to dissolve into electrolyte owing to the formation of high oxidation states[9,10]
Summary
Single atom catalyst, which contains isolated metal atoms singly dispersed on supports, has great potential for achieving high activity and selectivity in hetero-catalysis and electrocatalysis. By using operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy, it is disclosed that the isolated single atom ruthenium was kept under the oxidation states of 4+ even at high overpotential due to synergetic electron coupling, which endow exceptional electrocatalytic activity and stability simultaneously. In the past several years, single atom catalysts, which is the ultimate small size of metal particles, have attracted considerable attention regarding as a new frontier of heterogeneous catalysis due to the maximized surface to volume ratio, high selectivity, and unique catalytic functions[12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. Using single-atom as a strategy to design electrocatalyst to overcome the issue of high cost and low stability of noble metal oxides like RuO2 is still rare. More than acting as anchoring sites, the support may have a significant impact on the catalyst activity and stability that need to be further elucidated
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