naturecatalysis
Ruthenium oxides (RuOx) are promising alternatives to iridium catalysts for the oxygen-evolution reaction in proton-exchange membrane water electrolysis but lack stability in acid. Alloying with other elements can improve stability and performance but enlarges the search space. Material acceleration platforms combining high-throughput experiments with machine learning can accelerate catalyst discovery, yet predicting and co-optimizing synthesizability, activity and stability remain challenging. A predictive featurization workflow that links a hypothesized catalyst to its actual single- or mixed-phase synthesis and acidic oxygen-evolution reaction properties has not been reported. Here we report a hierarchical workflow, termed mixed acceleration, integrating theoretical and experimental descriptors to predict synthesis, activity and stability. Guided by mixed acceleration through 379 experiments, we identified seven ruthenium-based oxides surpassing the Pareto frontier of activity and stability. The most balanced composition, Ru0.5Zr0.1Zn0.4Ox, achieved an overpotential of 194 mV at 10 mA cm−2 with a ruthenium dissolution rate 12 times lower than that of RuO2.
For details:
Stable acidic oxygen-evolving catalyst discovery through mixed accelerations
Yang Bai 1,2,3, Kangming Li 3, 4, 5, Ning Han 1, 2, Jiheon Kim 1, 2, 6, Runze Zhang 5, Suhas Mahesh 5, Ali Shayesteh Zeraati 3, Brandon R. Sutherland 3, Kelvin Chow 3, Yongxiang Liang 1, Sjoerd Hoogland 1, 2, Jianan Erick Huang 1, David Sinton 2, 3, 6, Edward H. Sargent 1,2, Jason Hattrick-Simpers 2, 3, 5
1) Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2) The Alliance for AI-Accelerated Materials Discovery (A3MD), University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
3) Acceleration Consortium, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
4) Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
5) Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
6) Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
naturecatalysis
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2026/dd/d5dd00437c
