LAUSR

Rational designing of a high-efficiency and viable electrocatalyst is essential to conquering the bottleneck of sluggish alkaline hydrogen oxidation/evolution reactions (HOR/HER) kinetics. Herein, a MOF-engaged strategy for constructing Pt-free catalyst with Ru clusters anchored on porous Cu-Cu2O@C support (Ru/Cu-Cu2O@C) is proposed. The designed Ru/Cu-Cu2O@C exhibits superior HOR performance with the mass activity of 2.7 mA μg-1Ru at 50 mV, which is about 24 times higher than state-of-the-art Pt/C (0.11 mA  μg-1Pt). Significantly, Ru/Cu-Cu2O@C also displays an impressive HER performance by generating 26 mV@10 mA cm-2, outperforming majority of documented Ru-based electrocatalysts. Systematic characterization and density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that efficient electron transfer between Ru and Cu species results in an attenuated hydrogen binding energy (HBE) of Ru and an enhanced hydroxyl binding energy (OHBE) of Cu2O, together with an optimized H2O adsorption energy with Cu2O as H2O* capturing site, which jointly facilitate HOR/HER kinetics.