Breaking Acidic Oxygen Evolution Stability By Tuning Electronic Correlations of Strained RuOx Nanosheets with W and Er

Designing highly acidic resisting electrocatalysts applied in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) remains a grand challenge, particularly, for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Here we demonstrate rationally tuning electronic charge redistribution of the highly strained RuO_x nanosheets with W and Er that boost the acidic OER stability and follow an adsorbate evolution mechanism (AEM) route, significantly alleviating the dissolution of electrocatalysts. The representative W_0.2Er_0.1Ru₁O_x only required a 169 mV overpotential to reach 10 mA⸱cm⁻² with long-durable stability of 500 h in acidic electrolyte. More remarkably, to further promote W_0.2Er_0.1Ru₁O_x applying in industrial field, the highly strained W_0.2Er_0.1Ru₁O_x could also operate steadily for 120 h (100 mA⸱cm⁻²) in acidic PEM for the first time. Simultaneously, W_0.2Er_0.1Ru₁O_x exhibited high mass activity (1518.6 A⸱g⁻¹_ox), which was 28.5 times higher than that of the commercial RuO₂. Density functional theory calculations further revealed that W and Er tuned charge redistribution and promoted W_0.2Er_0.1Ru₁O_x following AEM mechanism, which optimized binding energies for oxygen intermediates and highly resisted the dissolution and oxidation of RuO_x in acidic electrolyte.