Recently, the team led by Professor Zhong Wenwu has published their latest research results “Nontrivial Topological Surface States in Ru3Sn7 toward Wide pH-Range Hydrogen Evolution Reaction” in an international journal Advanced Materials (IF=32.086).
Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is an important technology in the field of energy conversion and storage. However, traditional catalysts have such problems in hydrogen evolution as low efficiency and poor stability. Therefore, it has become one of hot research areas in search for efficient and stable electrocatalysts. In recent years, Non-trivial topological surface states (TSSs), as a new electronic state, have received wide attention and been considered as a potential high-efficiency electrocatalyst platform.
A topologically nontrivial metal Ru3Sn7 was prepared by arc melting in the study. The experimental results show that Nontrivial topological surface states (TSSs), which possess extraordinary carrier mobility and are protected by the bulk symmetry. What’s more, the (001) crystal family of Ru3Sn7 possesses nontrivial TSSs with linear dispersion relation and large nontrivial energy window. By XRD and STEM measurements, all samples were found to have high phase purity and excellent crystal structure, which has laid the foundation for distinguishing the influence of non-trivial topological surface states. The hydrogen evolution reaction is carried out in a wide pH range. The results show that Ru3Sn7 is an efficient electrocatalyst. By theoretical calculation, synchrotron radiation and In situ Raman, it is proved that non-trivial topological surface states play a key role in improving hydrogen evolution performance. These findings provide a promising approach to the rational design of topologically nontrivial metals as highly efficient electrocatalysts.
The paper is completed with Wang Zongpeng as the first author and Zhong Wenwu as the corresponding author. Taizhou University is the first unit of the paper.
Link to the paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.202302007
