Chemical Vapor Deposition of Ru/RuSe₂ Catalyst for Electrolytic Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

The current trend of synthesis in preparing catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is heavily dependent on solution processing which takes a great deal of time and is mostly not suitable to prepare supported structures. Solution processing has advantages to prepare controlled stoichiometry nano particles, while the prepared nano particles end up in another step of dispersing them into a solvent and coating onto desired substrate, which results in long process and sometimes poor adhesion of catalysts to the substrates. We believe chemical vapor deposition is less utilized in synthesis of supported catalysts for HER. In this regard the essence of this work was to provide a simple alternative synthesis route for catalysts used in HER. Therefore, this work demonstrates a one-step synthesis of highly stable Ru/RuSe₂ nanoparticles (NPs) on carbon paper using low temperature and pressure chemical vapor deposition (CVD), resulting in a heterointerface with multiple active sites for catalysis. The catalyst exhibited outstanding performance for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in an alkaline solution, with low overpotentials and fast hydrogen adsorption and desorption kinetics. The Ru/RuSe₂/C nanoparticle structure has potential for large-scale production and can be used as an efficient catalyst for HER.