Electronic tuning of RuO₂ polarizes metal–oxygen redox for proton exchange membrane water electrolysis

Xingen Lin, Peigen Liu, Jie Zheng, Jie Xu, Zihan Wang, Zhixuan Chen, Ze Lin, Xusheng Zheng, Xin Wang, Xianhui Ma, Dayin He, Xuyan Zhao, Ge Yu, Junmin Li, Sulei Hu (), Huang Zhou (), Wei-Xue Li () and Yuen Wu ()
Additional contact information
Xingen Lin: University of Science and Technology of China
Peigen Liu: Hefei
Jie Zheng: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale
Jie Xu: Wenzhou University
Zihan Wang: University of Science and Technology of China
Zhixuan Chen: Tongji University
Ze Lin: Tongji University
Xusheng Zheng: Hefei
Xin Wang: University of Science and Technology of China
Xianhui Ma: University of Science and Technology of China
Dayin He: University of Science and Technology of China
Xuyan Zhao: University of Science and Technology of China
Ge Yu: University of Science and Technology of China
Junmin Li: University of Science and Technology of China
Sulei Hu: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale
Huang Zhou: University of Science and Technology of China
Wei-Xue Li: University of Science and Technology of China
Yuen Wu: University of Science and Technology of China

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract The metal–oxygen redox behavior governs the performance of transition metal oxides in many electrochemical reactions, especially for RuO2 with the activity–stability paradox in the anode oxygen evolution reaction of proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers. Herein, we modulate the electronic structure of RuO2 near the Fermi level to promote reversible Ru redox while suppressing the oxidative release of lattice oxygen. As a result, the RuO2 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−2. The assembled proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers can operate steadily over 100 h at 100, 500, and 1000 mA cm−2. 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 RuO2 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.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63721-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-63721-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-63721-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().