Phase Engineering of a Ruthenium Nanostructure toward High-Performance Bifunctional Hydrogen Catalysis

The physicochemical properties and catalytic performance of transition metals are highly phase-dependent. Ru-based nanomaterials are superior catalysts toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR), but studies are mostly limited to conventional hexagonal-close-packed (hcp) Ru, mainly arising from the difficulty in synthesizing Ru with pure face-centered-cubic (fcc) phase. Herein, we report a crystal-phase-dependent catalytic study of MoO_x-modified Ru (MoO_x-Ru fcc and MoO_x-Ru hcp) for bifunctional HER and HOR. MoO_x-Ru fcc is proven to outperform MoO_x-Ru hcp in catalyzing both HER and HOR with much higher catalytic activity and more durable stability. The modification effect of MoO_x gives rise to optimal adsorption of H and OH especially on fcc Ru, which thus has resulted in the superior catalytic performance. This work highlights the significance of phase engineering in constructing superior electrocatalysts and may stimulate more efforts on phase engineering of other metal-based materials for diversified applications.