Implanting Ru nanoclusters into N-doped graphene for efficient alkaline hydrogen evolution

Electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline media is important for low-cost hydrogen production in industry. Developing catalysts with ultrafast water dissociation kinetics and decent activity are main challenges for alkaline HER. Here, we report a two-step pyrolysis method to construct Ru nanoclusters uniformly deposited on nitrogen-doped graphene for efficient alkaline HER. The catalyst shows an exceptional intrinsic activity with a low overpotential of 25.9 mV at 10 mA cm−2 and a low Tafel slope of 32.6 mV dec−1 in alkaline media. Density functional theory calculations indicate that the Ru-based nanoclusters exhibit good ability for water dissociation, giving rise to the superior hydrogen evolution activity. This work shines fresh light on fabricating highly efficient catalysts for alkaline HER, as well as provides a deep insight on the reaction mechanism of Ru-based catalysts under alkaline conditions. This work reports a Ru-nanocluster catalyst with an optimized coordinated structure and low water dissociation barrier, realizing an efficient alkaline hydrogen evolution activity (HER). Benefitting from the good water dissociation ability of Ru-NG, the Ru-NG exhibits a low overpotential of 25.9 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in alkaline media, and theoretical results suggest that the alkaline HER follows the Volmer-Tafel pathway. [Display omitted]