Polarized Ru‐H <i> <sub>x</sub> </i> WO <sub>3</sub> Interface Drives Interfacial Water Restructuring for Accelerated Neutral Hydrogen Evolution
ABSTRACT The electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in neutral media is fundamentally limited by sluggish water dissociation. Here we report a Ru single‐atom catalyst supported on hydrogen tungsten bronze (Ru─H x WO 3 ) and show that its high activity originates from strong metal–support interaction (SMSI) at the Ru─O─W interface. The strong Ru‐support coupling induces pronounced interfacial polarization, which restructures the local hydration layer and enriches activation‐relevant interfacial water configurations for the Volmer step. As a result, Ru─H x WO 3 achieves an ultralow overpotential of 14 mV at 10 mA cm −2 , delivers a high Ru mass activity of 11.09 A mg Ru −1 at 100 mV, and sustains stable HER operation for 80 h at 1 A cm −2 in neutral media. This work elucidates a complete mechanistic pathway, demonstrating how strong Ru‐support coupling leverages interfacial electronic modulation to dynamically control hydration‐layer structure, thereby accelerating HER kinetics in neutral media.
Authors
- Kuanchang He
- Sihao Lv
- Jin Zhang
- Faliang Cheng
- Min Zhang
- Fan Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9357-0827)
- Wei Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2199-154X)
- Qian Liu
- Hongfei You
Institutions
- Northwestern Polytechnical University (CN)
- Dongguan University of Technology (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Advanced Functional Materials
- Published
- 2026-05-18
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.75941
- Primary Topic
- Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province