Solvent-free microwave synthesis of ultra-small Ru-Mo2C@CNT with strong metal-support interaction for industrial hydrogen evolution

Exploring a simple, fast, solvent-free synthetic method for large-scale preparation of cheap, highly active electrocatalysts for industrial hydrogen evolution reaction is one of the most promising work today. In this work, a simple, fast and solvent-free microwave pyrolysis method is used to synthesize ultra-small (3.5nm) Ru-Mo2C@CNT catalyst with heterogeneous structure and strong metal-support interaction in one step. The Ru-Mo2C@CNT catalyst only exhibits an overpotential of 15mV at a current density of 10mAcm(-2), and exhibits a large turnover frequency value up to 21.9s(-1) under an overpotential of 100mV in 1.0M KOH. In addition, this catalyst can reach high current densities of 500mAcm(-2) and 1000mAcm(-2) at low overpotentials of 56mV and 78mV respectively, and it displays high stability of 1000h. This work provides a feasible way for the reasonable design of other large-scale production catalysts. While H-2 could be a renewable fuel, the large-scale preparation of cheap, active electrocatalysts for large-scale production remains a challenge. Here, authors use a rapid, solvent-free microwave pyrolysis method to synthesize nanostructured catalysts for large-scale industrial H-2 production.