Nitrogen doping engineering of Ru nanoparticles/Mo2C MXene for efficient hydrogen production via NH3BH3 hydrolysis

Ru/N-Mo 2 C MXene was assembled by hydrothermal and impregnation reduction process. • The introduction of Ru/N-Mo 2 C MXene accelerates the hydrolysis rate of ammonia borane. • Ru/N-Mo 2 C MXene exhibits a high TOF value of 1092 mol H2 ∙mol Ru −1 ∙min −1 . • Dual active sites of Ru and N-Mo 2 C MXene promotes the hydrogen production for NH 3 BH 3 . Ammonia borane (NH 3 BH 3 , AB) is an ideal hydrogen storage medium, but its intrinsic physicochemical properties require efficient catalysts for rapid hydrolytic dehydrogenation at room temperature. Herein, the Ru nanoparticles anchored nitrogen-doped Mo 2 C MXene (Ru/N-Mo 2 C MXene) catalyst was successfully synthesized via a hydrothermal method combined with an impregnation-reduction strategy, using urea as the nitrogen source. When the mass ratio of Mo 2 C MXene to urea was 1:6, the Ru/N-Mo 2 C MXene catalyst exhibited optimal performance. At 298 K, the turnover frequency value of Ru/N-Mo 2 C MXene was 1092 mol H2 ∙mol Ru −1 ∙min −1 , with an activation energy of 51.74 kJ∙mol −1 , and the catalytic activity remained 86.2% after five cycles. Mechanism analysis indicates that the superior hydrogen production performance of AB is attributed to both the generation of 1.59 nm Ru nanoparticles and the modulated local electronic structure induced by N doping originating from Ru/N-Mo 2 C MXene. These features facilitate the generation of dual active sites (electron-rich Ru and electron-deficient N-Mo 2 C MXene), which efficiently promote the cleavage of B H in AB and O H in H 2 O, thereby significantly boosting the catalytic activity of Ru/N-Mo 2 C MXene for AB hydrogen production. This work establishes a feasible strategy for designing high-efficiency catalysts for ammonia borane hydrolysis.