Synergistic Strong and Reactive Metal-Support Interactions-Induced Electronic Regulation of Sub-2 nm Ru Nanoclusters for Enhanced Hydrogen Evolution Performance

Metal-support interaction represents an effective strategy to boost the electrocatalytic performance of electrocatalysts. Herein, a novel electrocatalyst consisting of Ru nanoclusters anchored on the N-doped carbon nanosheets (abbreviated as Ru@N-CNS hereafter) with synergistic strong metal-support interaction (SMSI) and reactive metal-support interaction (RMSI) is developed. Thanks to the equilibrium of SMSI and RMSI, the obtained Ru@N-CNS electrocatalyst possesses abundant exposed active sites, robust mechanical strength, fast mass transfer, and regulated electronic states, thereby holding outstanding electrochemical hydrogen evolution performance in alkaline medium. To be specific, the Ru@N-CNS only requires a small overpotential of 16 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm⁻², low Tafel slope of 67.8 mV dec⁻¹, and highlighted long-term stability, surpassing the commercial Pt/C and Ru/C. More memorably, a water-splitting electrolyzer built by the Ru@N-CNS electrode as cathode and commercial RuO₂ as anode needs a low cell voltage of 1.56 V at 10 mA cm⁻² and exhibits excellent stability, reflecting a huge prospect for scalable electrochemical H₂ generation. This work opens up a novel thought of synergizing metal-support interactions for designing progressive electrocatalysts in energy-related fields.