Introducing Brønsted acid sites to accelerate the bridging-oxygen-assisted deprotonation in acidic water oxidation

) over a 550-hour stability test. Electrochemical studies, in-situ near-ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and density functional theory show that the W-O-Ru Brønsted acid sites are instrumental to facilitate proton transfer from the oxo-intermediate to the neighboring bridging oxygen sites, thus accelerating bridging-oxygen-assisted deprotonation OER steps in acidic electrolytes. The universality of the strategy is demonstrated for other Ru-M binary metal oxides (M = Cr, Mo, Nb, Ta, and Ti).