Lattice tensile strain regulated by ruthenium doping in NiCoP anchoring on carbonized wood for promoting hydrogen evolution reaction

•The superhydrophilic Ru-NiCoP is decorated on Carbonized wood.•Trace Ru doping leads to lattice tensile strain of bimetallic phosphide NiCoP.•The lattice tensile strain optimizes the HER activity of Ru-NiCoP/CW.•The Ru-NiCoP/CW exhibits − 23 mV at −10 mA cm−2 in 1 M KOH for HER. It has become increasingly urgent and imperative to develop sustainable, efficient and stable self-supporting electrodes for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Here, trace Ru-doped NiCoP in situ grown and anchored in carbonized wood (Ru-NiCoP/CW), exhibits an excellent HER catalytic activity. At −10 mA cm−2, it shows an extremely low overpotential and a small Tafel slope of − 25 mV and 60 mV dec−1, respectively. And it has a long-term stability of 100 h at −50 mA cm−2. Such impressive HER performance of Ru-NiCoP/CW is mainly due to the strain effect and electronic effect induced by the in-situ growth of trace Ru-doped bimetallic phosphide NiCoP on the porous self-supporting CW carrier. This method is believed toprovide a valuable reference for providing bimetallic phosphides with very low Ru content on carbonized wood electrode materials.