Engineering the strong metal support interaction of titanium nitride and ruthenium nanorods for effective hydrogen evolution reaction

Designing low-cost, high-efficiency hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts to break the bottleneck of current electrocatalytic water splitting processes remains a formidable challenge. Here, we report a strong metal-support interaction (SMSI) effect constructed with ruthenium nanorods (Ru NRs) loaded in porous titanium nitride (TiN) nanosheet assembled hollow tube (labeled as Ru NRs/TiN). Ru NRs/TiN exhibits outstanding HER performance in 1.0 M KOH solution, requiring an overpotential of only 25 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2, and demonstrates ultra-high mass activity (20 times than that of Pt/C) and superior turnover frequency values with respect to most Ru-based catalysts. Density functional theory calculations show that the SMSI can induce a notable charge redistribution at the Ru-TiN interface and enhance the HER activity of the catalyst. Moreover, the catalyst exhibits excellent stability (10,000 cycles without decay) due to the SMSI effect between the Ru species and the TiN support. Our work has broadened the range of support options for Ru-based catalysts for HER, and provided new insights into the SMSI engineering. [Display omitted] •The irregularly curved Ru nanorods loaded on TiN support (Ru NRs/TiN) is designed as HER catalyst.•Compared with Pt/C, Ru NRs/TiN exhibits ultra-high mass activity and superior turnover frequency values.•Strong metal-support interaction at the Ru-TiN interfaces enhances the free energy for atomic hydrogen adsorption.