Construction of RuO₂-Ru/MoO₂@carbon cloth bifunctional electrocatalyst for efficient overall water splitting

Efficient bifunction electrocatalyst is extremely interesting for electrochemical overall water splitting (OWS). Herein, a new RuO₂-Ru/MoO₂@CC (RRM/CC) bifunctional electrocatalyst was prepared via a solid phase reaction strategy. To obtain a suitable precursor for SPR, MoS₂ nanosheets and RuO₂ nanoparticles (NPs) were sequentially loaded onto carbon cloth conductive substrate. Subsequently, the prepared RuO₂/MoS₂/CC precursor was sealed in a furnace and annealed in Ar to trigger the redox SPR. After SPR, active RuO₂-Ru/MoO₂ units containing metal–metal oxide interfaces were formed on CC substrate uniformly. The optimized RRM/CC sample annealed at 400 °C exhibited a overpotential of 13 mV for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and 231 mV for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at 10 mA·cm⁻² under alkaline condition, respectively, which can be deduced to the modulated electronic structure and unique hierarchical structure. In addition, a low cell voltage of 1.48 V for OWS was required at 10 mA·cm⁻² under alkaline condition. Meanwhile, RRM/CC exhibited excellent pH-independent durability.