Structural evolution of Ru/Te interaction for hydrogen generation engineered by proof of concept via carbon doping

Catalyst support with low conductivity and weak metal-support interaction is a tricky issue in advanced catalyst development. Herein, taking the semi-conductive Te nanorods supported Ru nanoparticles as an example, we proposed a proof of concept for carbon doping to engineer the Ru/Te interaction for efficient hydrogen evolution reaction(HER). It was found that the conventional approach for carbon layer formation over Te nanorods via glucose by hydrothermal approach (Te–C-1) was insufficient to boost the catalytic performance, but the deep carbonization via further thermal annealing of Te–C-1 can enhance the conductivity and metal-support interaction when supporting Ru nanoparticles (Ru/Te–C-2). The important conductivity and charge transfer ability improvement and strong electronic interaction were found by the electrochemical measurements and the spectroscopic analysis, probably resulting from the deep carbonization induced Te nanorods structure destruction and in-depth carbon doping. As a result, Ru/Te–C-2 showed a catalytic performance as good as the commercial Pt/C catalyst for HER, which required ultralow overpotentials of 39 and 34 mV to achieve 10 mA cm−2 in 0.5 M H2SO4 and 1.0 M KOH, respectively, when loaded on the glass carbon electrode; Besides, the catalytic kinetics, charge transfer ability, and catalytic efficiency were also improved due to the carbon doping effect; high catalytic stability was also indicated by the dynamic stability running for 2000 cycles and steady-state operation for 20 h in both acidic and alkaline media. Density-functional theory calculations show that carbon doping effectively promotes the electron transfer from Te to Ru, thus changing the electronic structure and the adsorption energy for H* adsorption, which facilitates the HER process. The current study showed the validation of carbon doping for enhanced metal-supporting interaction that will be instructive for conductivity improvement of the relevant catalyst in electrocatalysis reaction.