Ruthenium nanoparticles incorporated hollow carbon nanoshells for improved hydrogen evolution reaction

The development of efficient and stable catalyst is crucial for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water electrolysis . The rational design of porous supports can effectively improve the exposure of active sites and increase the electrochemically active surface area of catalysts. In this study, a nanostructured carbon nanoshell (CS) is proposed for the synthesis of ruthenium and nitrogen incorporated carbon catalyst (CS@N-Ru) catalysts. Physicochemical characterization show that the prepared catalyst exhibits a hollow structure and abundant nitrogen/ruthenium related active sites, which enables the improvement of mass transfer and the catalytic activity . The electrochemical tests show that the prepared CS remarkably facilitates the performance of catalyst, the CS@N-Ru500 synthesized at 500 °C exhibits the best catalytic activity with a low overpotential of 35 mV at 10 mA/cm 2 and Tafel slope of 38 mV/dec, attributing to the increased electrochemically active surface area, reduced electron/ion transfer resistance, and accelerated kinetics of HER. These findings suggest that the CS@N-Ru can be a promising alternative to Pt/C for HER in water electrolysis.