Atomically dispersed Ru3 site catalysts for electrochemical sensing of small molecules

Rational design and construction of electrochemical sensing platforms with high sensitivity and selectivity is one of the challenges in practical application. Although single-atom catalysts (SACs) have attracted extensive attention, atomically dispersed metal catalysts (ADCs) with multi-atom sites can further compensate for the deficiencies of SACs, which have gradually been a research hotspot in recent years. Herein, atomically dispersed Ru3 site catalyst (Ru-3/NC) is employed to catalyze small biomolecule oxidation, which exhibits much superior electrocatalytic ability of uric acid (UA) to Ru single-atom catalyst (Ru-1/NC). What's more, theoretical calcu-lations reveal that the enhanced performance is mainly derived from the dominant electronic structure of ADCs with multi-atom sites compared to SACs, leading to the more favorable adsorption of hydroxy anion groups, which can serve as one part of the active moiety and promoter to achieve the fast oxidation of small bio-molecules. Our findings provide a new paradigm for designing promising catalysts to realize highly sensitive and selective small biomolecule detection and explore the catalytic mechanisms of small biomolecules at the atomic scale.

Automated summary

In this study, an atomically dispersed Ru3 site catalyst was used to catalyze small biomolecule oxidation, showing superior electrocatalytic ability compared to a Ru single-atom catalyst. The findings provide a new paradigm for designing promising catalysts to achieve highly sensitive and selective small biomolecule detection.