Facile Spray Pyrolysis Synthesis of Ruthenium Single-Atomic Catalyst with High Activity and Stability for Hydrogen Evolution Reactions over a Wide pH Range

Abstract

Electrochemical water splitting is an economic, green and sustainable route to produce hydrogen through the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Nowadays, ruthenium is an efficient catalyst with a desirable cost for HER. Doping Ru with a transition metal oxide was recently shown to greatly boost the activity and durability of the HER, even with small amounts of ruthenium based electrocatalysts. It also reduced total amount of Ru. Recent literature reported that Ru-O-Mo sites have better HER than Ru single atom due to significantly improved H2O adsorption. Among the various synthetic method, spray pyrolysis methods can produce rapidly large-scale production of uniformly mixed elements in spherical particles at one-step. In this study, we synthesized ruthenium doped MoO2 spheres (200~300nm) using ultrasonic spray pyrolysis method in various temperature from 500 oC to 800 oC. The synthesized catalysts were analyzed by XRD, FE-SEM, Raman, XPS and electrochemical analyzer. This research can provide a new strategy to synthesize highly active catalysts for HER over a wide pH range.