Abstract
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•N,S co-doped carbonaceous shell coordinated Ru nanoclusters are synthesized.•Strong interaction between the components regulates the local coordination environment of the Ru/NSC catalyst.•Low loading of Ru nanoclusters (2.58 wt%) exhibits 50 and 110 mV overpotentials in 1 M KOH and 1 KHCO3.•The upshift of d-band center for Ru atoms optimizes the water and hydrogen adsorption energies.
Exploring effective electrocatalyst with low-cost for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is highly desirable for commercial hydrogen production. Herein, a heterogeneous nanostructured catalyst is synthesized by implanting Ru nanoclusters into N and S co-doped carbonaceous shell using a simple thermal condensation of glucose and thiourea with ruthenium chloride precursors followed by carbonization. Due to the unique structural design and synergistic effect of Ru nanoclusters embedded in N, S co-doped carbonaceous shell (NSC), the compositionally tuned catalyst (Ru/NSC-200) tends to show HER activity with overpotentials of 50 and 110 mV at 10 mA cm−2 current density in 1 M KOH and 1 M KHCO3 solutions, respectively. The catalyst exhibits mass activity of 10- and 1.2-times greater than those of commercial Pt/C (20 wt%) in 1 M KOH and 0.5 M H2SO4 solutions, which reveals the techno-economic trait of the catalyst. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations demonstrate that the NSC induces a strong interaction with Ru, facilitating fast electron transfer during the catalysis. This work provides a simple and straightforward approach to develop effective catalyst in the realm of hydrogen evolution reaction.