Tailoring the Oxygen Vacancy Distribution in Se‐Doped RuO<sub>x</sub> to Enhance Its Stability in Acidic Water Electrolysis
Developing durable ruthenium (Ru)-based catalysts for proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer (PEMWE) remains challenging due to irreversible Ru dissolution and lattice oxygen instability. Although elemental doping is a general method to improve stability, it inadvertently induces oxygen vacancies (V<sub>O</sub>s), which are randomly distributed in the nanocatalyst. Notably, the impact of V<sub>O</sub> distribution on the stability of Ru-based catalysts remains unresolved. Herein, we synthesized the Se-doped Ru oxide via annealing the mixture of ruthenium (III) chloride and selenium (Se) in the air (Ur-Se-RuO<sub>x</sub>) with the presence of urea, showing the V<sub>O</sub>s distributed away from Se dopants, which is significantly different from the Se-doped Ru oxide synthesized without urea (Se-RuO<sub>x</sub>), showing V<sub>O</sub>s distributed relatively close to the Se dopants. The Ur-Se-RuO<sub>x</sub> demonstrates superior oxygen evolution reaction performance over Se-RuO<sub>x</sub>. Particularly, Ur-Se-RuO<sub>x</sub> delivers a low working voltage (1.62 V@1 A cm<sup>-2</sup>) and excellent durability (>1000 h@200 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>) in PEMWE tests. Experimental and theoretical results reveal that V<sub>O</sub>s engage in long-range cooperation with spatially decoupled Se dopants in Ur-Se-RuO<sub>x</sub>, synergistically enhancing reaction kinetics via an intramolecular oxygen coupling mechanism, while inhibiting the lattice oxygen mechanism and suppressing Ru dissolution, which demonstrates a new strategy to break the activity-stability trade-off in promising Ru-based catalysts.
Authors
- Yongping Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8468-8476)
- Zipeng Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1135-6742)
- Shuailong Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1004-021X)
- Liang Cao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4452-022X)
- Guikai Zhang
- Gao Xiao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6166-8771)
- Juncai Dong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8860-093X)
- Jiangnan Song (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2394-2838)
- Hao Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6975-6138)
- Yabin Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5180-2009)
- Ziliang Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4998-9721)
- Wenbo Dong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4142-6123)
- Yao Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2896-9046)
- Xinyi Han (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4903-7827)
- Xingyu Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7141-9281)
- Shulin Wang
Institutions
- Beijing Institute of Technology (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Westlake University (CN)
- Nanjing University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Beijing University of Technology (CN)
- Beijing Research Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Technology (CN)
- Zero to Three (US)
- Advanced Technology & Materials (China) (CN)
- Institute of High Energy Physics (CN)
- Zhejiang University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Angewandte Chemie International Edition
- Published
- 2025-08-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202512848
- Primary Topic
- Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation
- National Key Research and Development Program of China