Ultralow Ru doping induced interface engineering in MOF derived ruthenium-cobalt oxide hollow nanobox for efficient water oxidation electrocatalysis

Abstract

• A MOF mediated method has been proposed for the synthesis of (Ru-Co)O x nanobox. • The (Ru-Co)O x nanoboxes are endowed with rich vacancies and interfaces. • The doping of ultralow Ru effectively modifies the electronic structure of CoO x . • (Ru-Co)O x nanoboxes could deliver outstanding electrocatalytic OER performance. For accelerating the reaction kinetics of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and improving the efficiency of water electrolysis, it is essential to develop high-performance and robust OER electrocatalysts. Herein, heterostructured ruthenium-cobalt oxide hollow nanoboxes are developed for enabling a highly efficient OER electrocatalysis. Benefitting from the desirable structural and compositional merits of more exposure of surface active centers, modulated electronic structure, and interfacial synergy effect, the (Ru-Co)O x hollow nanobox could exhibit excellent electrocatalytic performance toward OER. Particularly, an extremely low overpotential of 265 mV is necessary for the optimized (Ru-Co)O x -350 to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm −2 , together with a small Tafel slope of 60 mV dec -1 . More interestingly, by combing (Ru-Co)O x -350 with Pt/C for driving alkaline water splitting, an ultralow cell voltage of merely 1.57 V is required.