Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) consists of four sequential proton-coupled electron transfer steps, which suffer from sluggish kinetics even on state-of-the-art ruthenium dioxide (RuO₂) catalysts. Understanding and controlling the proton transfer process could be an effective strategy to improve OER performances. Herein, we present a strategy to accelerate the deprotonation of OER intermediates by introducing strong Brønsted acid sites (e.g. tungsten oxides, WO_x) into the RuO₂. The Ru-W binary oxide is reported as a stable and active iridium-free acidic OER catalyst that exhibits a low overpotential (235 mV at 10 mA cm⁻²) and low degradation rate (0.014 mV h⁻¹) over a 550-hour stability test. Electrochemical studies, in-situ near-ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and density functional theory show that the W-O-Ru Brønsted acid sites are instrumental to facilitate proton transfer from the oxo-intermediate to the neighboring bridging oxygen sites, thus accelerating bridging-oxygen-assisted deprotonation OER steps in acidic electrolytes. The universality of the strategy is demonstrated for other Ru-M binary metal oxides (M = Cr, Mo, Nb, Ta, and Ti).

析氧反应 (OER) 由四个连续的质子耦合电子转移步骤组成，即使在最先进的二氧化钌 (RuO ₂ ) 催化剂上，其动力学也很缓慢。了解和控制质子转移过程可能是提高 OER 性能的有效策略。在此，我们提出了一种通过在RuO _{2中引入强布朗斯台德酸位点（例如氧化钨，WO x} ）来加速OER 中间体去质子化的策略。据报道，Ru-W 二元氧化物是一种稳定且活性的无铱酸性 OER 催化剂，具有低过电势（10 mA cm ^-2时为 235 mV ）和低降解速率（0.014 mV h ^-1) 超过 550 小时的稳定性测试。电化学研究、原位近环境压力 X 射线光电子能谱和密度泛函理论表明，WO-Ru Brønsted 酸位有助于促进质子从含氧中间体转移到相邻的桥接氧位点，从而加速桥接-酸性电解质中的氧辅助去质子化 OER 步骤。其他 Ru-M 二元金属氧化物（M = Cr、Mo、Nb、Ta 和 Ti）证明了该策略的普遍性。