Interfacial engineering of Ru-S-Sb/antimonene electrocatalysts for highly efficient electrolytic hydrogen generation in neutral electrolyte.

ABSTRACT

The development of high-kinetic catalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in a neutral electrolyte is of great importance but unfortunately remains a challenge so far. Herein, we report hybrids with abundant Ru-S-Sb bonds and engineered ultrathin antimonene (Ru-S-Sb/antimonene) as highly kinetic, active, stable electrocatalysts for the HER in an aqueous neutral electrolyte. Experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that Ru-S-Sb bonds coupling with antimonene synergistically work to promote HER activity. The present study brings us one step closer to understand the structure-composition-property relationships and practical electrolytic H2 production.