Ruthenium nanoparticles incorporated hollow carbon nanoshells for improved hydrogen evolution reaction

The development of efficient and stable catalyst is crucial for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water electrolysis. The rational design of porous supports can effectively improve the exposure of active sites and increase the electrochemically active surface area of catalysts. In this study, a nanostructured carbon nanoshell (CS) is proposed for the synthesis of ruthenium and nitrogen incorporated carbon catalyst (CS@N-Ru) catalysts. Physicochemical characterization show that the prepared catalyst exhibits a hollow structure and abundant nitrogen/ruthenium related active sites, which enables the improvement of mass transfer and the catalytic activity. The electrochemical tests show that the prepared CS remarkably facilitates the performance of catalyst, the CS@N-Ru500 synthesized at 500 °C exhibits the best catalytic activity with a low overpotential of 35 mV at 10 mA/cm2 and Tafel slope of 38 mV/dec, attributing to the increased electrochemically active surface area, reduced electron/ion transfer resistance, and accelerated kinetics of HER. These findings suggest that the CS@N-Ru can be a promising alternative to Pt/C for HER in water electrolysis.