Titanium-doped copper oxide/ruthenium heterostructure constructed on Cu3Ti nanosheet for efficient hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline media

Platinum group metals (Pt, Ru, Ir, etc.) are the most active catalysts for acidic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), yet they cannot deliver satisfactory performance in alkaline media owing to the high energy barrier of water dissociation. Here, we report the outstanding alkaline HER performance of Cu3Ti-supported Ti-doped CuO/Ru (Cu3Ti@CTO/Ru) heterostructure catalysts, which were fabricated simply by an impregnation-heat treatment method. Density functional theory calculation results indicate that the energy barriers of both water dissociation and hydrogen desorption at CTO/Ru heterointerface are significantly reduced relative to Ru catalyst alone. As a result, the Cu3Ti@CTO/Ru catalyst at the optimum Ru loading amount achieves a low overpotential of 34 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm-2 and an ultra-low Tafel slope of 29 mV dec-1 in 1 M KOH, outperforming the benchmark 20% Pt/C catalyst. This study provides new insight into the development of advanced alkaline HER catalysts.