Quenching induces the co-introduction of O vacancies and N dopants in Co-RuO2 to promote ampere-level current density hydrogen production

Optimizing the electronic structure of Ru by introducing N dopants or O vacancies (V O ) into RuO 2 is expected to be a promising strategy to stimulate the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance. However, it is a challenge to develop a fast and low-energy method to simultaneously achieve the construction of N dopants and V O . This work was the first to optimize the quenching technique for achieving the co-introduction of V O and N in Co-RuO 2 nanosheets (N,Co-RuO 2 -V O ). Related characterizations confirmed that V O and N dopants synergistically optimized the electronic configuration of Ru and the reaction path of alkaline HER. As expected, the mass activity of N,Co-RuO 2 -V O (2208.63 mA m g R u - 1 ) was 8.05-fold that of Pt/C at 100 mV for alkaline HER. Surprisingly, N,Co-RuO 2 -V O required only 148.6 mV to achieve an industrial-grade current density of 1 A cm −2 , which was much lower than the commercial Pt/C catalyst (312 mV). Overall, this work provides an energy-efficient new strategy for the development of Ru-based catalysts with ampere-level currents.