Electronic tuning of RuO₂ polarizes metal–oxygen redox for proton exchange membrane water electrolysis
The metal-oxygen redox behavior governs the performance of transition metal oxides in many electrochemical reactions, especially for RuO<sub>2</sub> with the activity-stability paradox in the anode oxygen evolution reaction of proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers. Herein, we modulate the electronic structure of RuO<sub>2</sub> near the Fermi level to promote reversible Ru redox while suppressing the oxidative release of lattice oxygen. As a result, the RuO<sub>2</sub> integrated with electron-rich p-block metals Sb achieves an overpotential of 220 mV and long-term operational stability of 1200 h at 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>. The assembled proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers can operate steadily over 100 h at 100, 500, and 1000 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>. Further advanced in-situ characterizations reveal the more reversible and milder Ru redox and the passivated lattice oxygen reactivity, which suppresses drastic structural changes of RuO<sub>2</sub> during the oxygen evolution reaction. This work highlights the importance of engineering metal-oxygen redox behavior and provides insights for designing high-performance catalysts for energy conversion and storage devices.
Authors
- Dayin He
- Huang Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9202-5349)
- Jie Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4506-9701)
- Yuen Shing Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9524-2843)
- Xingen Lin
- Xusheng Zheng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2559-6106)
- Junmin Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9373-1122)
- Wei‐Xue Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5043-3088)
- Sulei Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5350-9447)
- Xianhui Ma
- Xin Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2686-466X)
- Jie Zheng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1817-6357)
- Ge Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4905-9415)
- Peigen Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2689-2786)
- Zhixuan Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1626-0547)
- Xuyan Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4360-8574)
- Ze Lin
- Zihan Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8384-7678)
Institutions
- Tongji University (CN)
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Anhui University (CN)
- Wenzhou University (CN)
- Hefei National Center for Physical Sciences at Nanoscale (CN)
- National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-09-30
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63721-7
- Citations
- 4
- Primary Topic
- Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.45
Funders
- Salt Science Research Foundation
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- University of Science and Technology of China
- National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory
- Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province
- Youth Innovation Promotion Association
- Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility