Tailoring B-site of lead-ruthenate pyrochlore for boosting acidic water oxidation activity and stability

Achieving highly active, stable and low cost oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts is a significant challenge for promoting splitting water technology in acidic media. Herein, we report a low-temperature pyrolysis cation exchange resin (CER) strategy to synthesize lead-ruthenate pyrochlore (Pb 2 [Ru 2-x Pb x ]O 7-δ ) catalyst with different contents of Pb substituted at B-site. We demonstrated temperature effectively influence the amount of Pb at B-site, further modulated the electronic states of Ru and the concentration of oxygen defects. Benefiting from rich oxygen defects, the representative PRPO-350 catalyst exhibits outstanding OER activity with a overpotential of 174 mV at 10 mA cm −2 geo , a super-low Tafel slope of 28.8 mV dec -1 and excellent stability up to 150 h in acid water. DFT calculations have demonstrated that the such structure will lead to the O-2p orbital closing to the Fermi level, eventually boosts the OER activity. • Underline the important of B-site of pyrochlore for tuning catalytic activity. • Unique structure exhibits extremely high activity for acid water oxidation. • The low-cost cation exchange resin was first used as adsorbent material. • The cation exchange resin reduces the synthesis temperature.