Hollow Ru/RuO2 nanospheres with nanoparticulate shells for high performance electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reactions

Kyoungil Cho; June Young Jang; Yoon-Joo Ko; Yoon Myung; Seung Uk Son

doi:10.1039/D3NA00899A

Hollow Ru/RuO₂ nanospheres with nanoparticulate shells for high performance electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reactions†

Kyoungil Cho,

‡^a June Young Jang,‡^a Yoon-Joo Ko,^b Yoon Myung*^c and Seung Uk Son

*^a

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a Department of Chemistry, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Korea
E-mail: sson@skku.edu

^b Laboratory of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, National Center for Inter University Research Facilities (NCIRF), Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea

^c Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Advanced Energy Materials and Components R&D Group, Busan 46744, Korea
E-mail: myungyoon@kitech.re.kr

Abstract

This work shows that hollow Ru/RuO₂ nanoparticles having nanoparticulate shells (HN-Ru/RuO₂) can be prepared using hollow microporous organic polymers with Ru species (H-MOP-Ru) as precursors. Using silica spheres as templates, H-MOPs were prepared through the Sonogashira–Hagihara coupling of 1,3,5-triethynylbenzene with 2,3-ethoxymethylenedioxy-1,4-diiodobenzene. Acid hydrolysis of cyclic ethyl orthoformate protecting groups generated catechol moieties to form H-MOP-Cat. Then, H-MOP-Ru was obtained by incorporating Ru species into H-MOP-Cat. Heat-treatment of H-MOP-Ru under air induced the formation of HN-Ru/RuO₂ with a diameter of 61 nm and shells consisting of 6–7 nm nanoparticles. Due to the hollow structure and nanoparticulate shells, HN-Ru/RuO₂ showed a high surface area of 80 m² g⁻¹ and a pore volume of 0.18 cm³ g⁻¹. The HN-Ru/RuO₂ showed enhanced electrocatalytic performance for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with an overpotential of 295 mV @ 10 mA cm⁻² and a Tafel slope of 46 mV dec⁻¹ in alkaline electrolyte, compared with control RuO₂ such as commercial Ru/RuO₂ nanoparticles (A-Ru/RuO₂) and home-made Ru/RuO₂ nanoparticles (N-Ru/RuO₂) prepared via the same synthetic procedure as HN-Ru/RuO₂. While HN-Ru/RuO₂ inevitably contained Pd originated from coupling catalysts, it showed superior performance to Ru/RuO₂ nanoparticles with the same Pd content (N1-Ru/RuO₂), indicating that the efficient electrocatalytic performance of HN-Ru/RuO₂ is attributable to its hollow structure and nanoparticulate shells.

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D3NA00899A
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 19 Oct 2023
Accepted: 14 Dec 2023
First published: 15 Dec 2023
This article is Open Access

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Nanoscale Adv., 2024,6, 867-875

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Hollow Ru/RuO₂ nanospheres with nanoparticulate shells for high performance electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reactions

K. Cho, J. Y. Jang, Y. Ko, Y. Myung and S. U. Son, Nanoscale Adv., 2024, 6, 867 DOI: 10.1039/D3NA00899A

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