Ruthenium on boron-doped graphene as a good-stability bifunctional electrocatalyst

The bifunctional electrocatalysts usually have no good performances simultaneously for both oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Commercial Pt/C electrocatalyst is expensive and not stable; graphene is a good candidate for electrocatalysis but has low activity due to few active sites. Herein, we dope boron (B) and transitional metal ruthenium (Ru) on graphene to obtain Ru@BG bifunctional electrocatalysts, which show good performances with ∆E of 0.83 V and 0.85 V for 10%Ru@BG and 6%Ru@BG, respectively. Both of 6%Ru@BG and 10%Ru@BG have high half-wave potential of 0.81 V, which are only more negative by 10 mV than Pt/C electrocatalyst. In addition, 10%Ru@BG shows good stability as well as methanol tolerance, which are much superior to Pt/C electrocatalyst. This work highlights a novel bifunctional electrocatalyst and endows potential in efficient energy storage.