Recently, Professor Mu Shichun’s team made great progress in the study of high-performance catalysts for acidic water oxidation. The research paper had been published in Nature Communications under the title “Bicontinuous RuO2 nanoreactors for acidic water oxidation”. The first author’s affiliation is the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing of WUT. The co-first authors include Chen Ding, a doctoral student of WUT. Professor Mu Shichun is the sole corresponding author.

The research group designed bicontinuous RuO2 nanoreactors composed of multiscale defective RuO2 nanocrystals and internal pores. The experimental results proved that the resulting nanoreactor drives water oxidation efficiently and stably in acidic media and exhibits high-quality and stable hydrogen production performance in PEMWE tests and integrated regenerative fuel cell power systems. Hence this work demonstrated a feasible idea for the scientific challenge of synchronous improvement of Ruthenium (Ru)-based catalysts’ activity and stability.

This work is another important research achievement of Professor Mu Shichun’s team after publishing papers on Ru/Ir-based catalysts in top international journals in succession since 2024 including Angewandte Chemie International Edition (https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202407577, first author, Chen Ding, a doctoral student of WUT), Energy & Environmental Science (2024, 17, 1885, first author, Chen Ding, a doctoral student of WUT), and Nano Letters (2024, 24, 1015, first author, Mu Xueqin, a doctoral student of WUT).

Figure 1. Illustration of RuO2 nanoreactor by 3D tomography reconstruction 

Figure 2. Catalytic performance of MD-RuO2-BN in water oxidation and water electrolysis

Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48372-4

Written by: Mu Shichun

Rewritten by: Mei Mengqi

Edited by:Yu Mengmei, Li Tiantian

Source: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing