Amorphous Ruthenium–Selenium Nanoparticles as a pH-Universal Catalyst for Enhanced Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

In order to broaden the applications of water splitting for hydrogen production, it is highly desired to develop an ideal catalyst, which can operate in a wide pH range. In this work, we proposed amorphous RuSex nanoparticles (NPs) with a highly disordered structure to introduce abundant surface defects, which contribute to the enhanced HER activity. The optimized RuSe1.5 NPs exhibited the pH-universal activity, which only require an overpotential of 24, 30, and 12 mV to reach a current density of 10 mA cm–2 in 0.5 M H2SO4 (pH = 0), 1 M PBS (pH = 7), and 1 M KOH (pH = 14), respectively. By capitalizing on the synergistic effect between Ru and Se, we have successfully achieved a balance in the strong adsorption of reaction intermediates on Ru sites and significantly improved the performance of HER. This work highlights the crucial role of understanding and harnessing the elemental synergies in the development of optimized HER catalysts and paves the way for the advancement of hydrogen production.