Heterointerface engineering of Ru/RuS2 on N/S-doped hollow mesoporous carbon for promoting alkaline hydrogen evolution

Alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) suffers from a sluggish kinetic, which requires the elaborate catalytic interface and micro-nanoscale architecture engineering of the electrocatalysts to accelerate the water dissociation and hydrogen evolution. Herein, the heterointerface engineering was proposed for promoting the alkaline HER by constructing the highly exposed Ru/RuS2 heterostructures homogeneously distributed on hollow N/S-doped carbon microspheres (Ru/RuS2@h-NSC). Benefited from the synergistic effect of heterointerfacial Ru/RuS2, the high accessibility of the active sites on both inner and outer surface of mesoporous shells and the efficient mass transport, Ru/RuS2@h-NSC affords a remarkable catalytic performance with an overpotential of 26 mV@10 mA/cm2 for alkaline HER, outperforming most of the state-of-the-art catalysts. Further applying Ru/RuS2@h-NSC and its oxidized derivate for the overall alkaline water splitting, the required cell voltage is much lower than that of the commercial Pt/C||RuO2 pair to achieve the same current density. Our study may allow us to guide the design of micro-nanoreactors with optimal catalytic interfaces for promising electrocatalytic applications.