Electrosynthesis of ruthenium nanocluster incorporated nickel diselenide for efficient overall water splitting

Abstract

Design of effective catalyst activation strategies that enable efficient electrocatalytic activity towards overall water splitting is necessary for the development of clean energy conversion technologies. Incorporation of metal nanoclusters effectively increases the active site exposure leading to enhanced electrocatalytic activity. Here, we present an energy-efficient and scalable single-step approach for the electrosynthesis of ruthenium nanocluster decorated nickel diselenide catalysts for high-performance and stable alkaline water splitting application. The catalyst exhibits exceptional bifunctional activity for both hydrogen and oxygen evolution, and we demonstrate remarkable full-cell performance with a cell potential of 1.45 V to deliver a current density of 10 mA cm⁻², along with impressive long-term stability over 400 h. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations are carried out, which demonstrate that the ruthenium nanocluster decoration facilitates the exothermic dissociation of water into H and OH species, while also optimizing the adsorption energies of H⁺ and OH⁻ when compared to bare NiSe₂. The present approach could be extended to a variety of catalytically active materials that would potentially be of interest for alkaline water-splitting applications.