Electrocatalytic water splitting in alkaline media plays an important role in hydrogen production technology. Normally, the catalytic activity of commonly used transition metal oxides usually suffers from unsatisfactory electron conductivity and unfavorable binding strength for transition intermediates. To boost the intrinsic catalytic activity, we propose a rational strategy to construct lattice distorted transition metal oxides decorated with noble-metal nanoclusters. This strategy is verified by loading ruthenium clusters onto the lithium ion intercalated hematite Fe2O3, which leads to significant distortion of the FeO6 unit cells. A remarkable overpotential of 21 mV with the Tafel slope of 39.8 mV/dec is achieved at 10 mA cm-2 for hydrogen evolution reaction in 1.0 M KOH aqueous electrolyte. The assembled alkaline electrolyzer can catalyse overall water splitting for as long as 165 h at the current density of 250 mA cm-2 with negligible performance degradation, indicating great potential in the field of sustainable hydrogen production.

中文翻译：

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钌团簇装饰在晶格膨胀赤铁矿 Fe2O3 上，用于高效电催化碱性水分解


碱性介质中的电催化分解水在制氢技术中起着重要作用。通常，常用过渡金属氧化物的催化活性通常受到电子电导率不令人满意和过渡中间体不利的结合强度的影响。为了提高本征催化活性，我们提出了一种合理的策略来构建用贵金属纳米团簇装饰的晶格扭曲过渡金属氧化物。通过将钌簇加载到锂离子插层赤铁矿 Fe2O3 上来验证了这一策略，这导致 FeO6 单胞发生显着变形。在 1.0 M KOH 水性电解质中发生析氢反应，在 10 mA cm-2 处实现了 21 mV 的显着过电位和 39.8 mV/dec 的塔菲尔斜率。组装好的碱性电解槽可以在 250 mA cm-2 的电流密度下催化整体分解水长达 165 h，性能下降可以忽略不计，表明在可持续氢气生产领域具有巨大潜力。