Tracking the correlation between spintronic structure and oxygen evolution reaction mechanism of cobalt-ruthenium-based electrocatalyst

Chen Wang; Chaoyuan Deng; Panlong Zhai; Xiaoran Shi; Wei Liu; Dingfeng Jin; Bing Shang; Junfeng Gao; Licheng Sun; Jungang Hou

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-55688-8

Tracking the correlation between spintronic structure and oxygen evolution reaction mechanism of cobalt-ruthenium-based electrocatalyst

Nat Commun. 2025 Jan 2;16(1):215. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-55688-8.

Authors

Chen Wang^#¹, Chaoyuan Deng^#², Panlong Zhai¹, Xiaoran Shi³, Wei Liu¹, Dingfeng Jin¹, Bing Shang¹, Junfeng Gao³, Licheng Sun^{4

5}, Jungang Hou⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Frontiers Science Center for Smart Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China.
² School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China.
³ Laboratory of Materials Modification by Laser, Ion and Electron Beams, Dalian University of Technology, Ministry of Education, Dalian, China.
⁴ Center of Artificial Photosynthesis for Solar Fuels and Department of Chemistry, School of Science, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Frontiers Science Center for Smart Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China. [email protected].

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Regulating the spintronic structure of electrocatalysts can improve the oxygen evolution reaction performance efficiently. Nonetheless, the effects of tuning the spintronic structure for the oxygen evolution reaction mechanisms have rarely been discussed. Here, we show a ruthenium-cobalt-tin oxide with optimized spintronic structure due to the quantum spin interaction of Ru and Co. The specific spintronic structure of ruthenium-cobalt-tin oxide promotes the charge transfer kinetics and intermediates evolution behavior under applied potential, generating long-lived active species with higher spin density sites for the oxygen evolution reaction after the reconstruction process. Moreover, the ruthenium-cobalt-tin oxide possesses decoupled proton-electron transfer procedure during the oxygen evolution reaction process, demonstrating that the electron transfer procedure of O-O bond formation between *O intermediate and lattice oxygen in Co-O-Ru is the rate-determining step of the oxygen evolution reaction process. This work provides rational perspectives on the correlation between spintronic structure and oxygen evolution reaction mechanism.