Regulative Electronic States around Ruthenium/Ruthenium Disulphide Heterointerfaces for Efficient Water Splitting in Acidic Media

Theoretical calculations unveil the charge redistribution over abundant interfaces and the enhanced electronic states of Ru/RuS2 heterostructure. The resulting surface electron-deficient Ru sites display optimized adsorption behavior toward diverse reaction intermediates, thereby reducing the thermodynamic energy barriers. Experimentally, for the first time the laminar Ru/RuS2 heterostructure is rationally engineered by virtue of the synchronous reduction and sulfurization under eutectic salt system. Impressively, it exhibits extremely high catalytic activity for both OER (201 mV @ 10 mA cm(-2)) and HER (45 mV @ 10 mA cm(-2)) in acidic media due to favorable kinetics and excellent specific activity, consequently leading to a terrific performance in acidic overall water splitting devices (1.501 V @ 10 mA cm(-2)). The in-depth insight into the internal activity origin of interfacial effect could offer precise guidance for the rational establishment of hybrid interfaces.

Automated summary

Theoretical calculations and experimental results demonstrate that Ru/RuS2 heterostructure possesses optimized catalytic performance, especially showing extremely high activity and performance in acidic media.