3D Porous Ru-Doped NiCo-MOF Hollow Nanospheres for Boosting Oxygen Evolution Reaction Electrocatalysis

Developing high-performance and cost-efficient catalysts toward oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is an important but daunting task due to the sluggish kinetics hindered by the four-electron transfer process. Herein, an advanced class of ultralow Ru-doped NiCo-MOF hollow porous nanospheres (denoted as Ru@NiCo-MOF HPNs) has been reported in this work. Benefiting from the high porosity and large surface area of the metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) and optimized electronic properties by Ru doping, the as-prepared Ru@NiCo-MOF HPNs exhibit superior performance for water oxidation with the overpotential of only 284 mV to reach a current density of 10 mA·cm–2 in alkaline electrolyte, as well as a small Tafel slope of 78.8 mV·dec–1, outperforming the NiCo-MOF HPNs (358 mV) and commercial RuO2 catalyst (326 mV). The incorporation of Ru in NiCo-MOF HPNs enables a stable OER activity for at least 39 h. Moreover, we have probed the interaction between the content of Ru and OER performance, impressively, Ru@NiCo-MOF HPNs with 13.5 atom % Ru doping (denoted as Ru@NiCo-MOF-4) exhibited the highest OER activity with the excellent mass activity of 310 mA·mg–1 at an overpotential of 284 mV. Besides, a two-electrode cell with Ru@NiCo-MOF-4 as the anode and commercial Pt/C catalyst as the cathode also demonstrated outstanding electrocatalytic overall water splitting performance with a cell potential of merely 1.57 V to deliver a current density of 10 mA·cm–2.