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

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)Ox hollow nanobox could exhibit excellent electrocatalytic performance toward OER. Particularly, an extremely low overpotential of 265 mV is necessary for the optimized (Ru-Co)Ox-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)Ox-350 with Pt/C for driving alkaline water splitting, an ultralow cell voltage of merely 1.57 V is required.

Automated summary

The development of heterostructured ruthenium-cobalt oxide hollow nanoboxes enables highly efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysis, with extremely low overpotential and a small Tafel slope, conducive to electrolysis reactions.