Competitive Adsorption: Reducing the Poisoning Effect of Adsorbed Hydroxyl on Ru Single‐Atom Site with SnO(2) for Efficient Hydrogen Evolution

Ruthenium (Ru) has been theoretically considered a viable alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction electrocatalyst due to its fast water dissociation kinetics. However, its strong affinity to the adsorbed hydroxyl (OH(ad)) blocks the active sites, resulting in unsatisfactory performance during the practical HER process. Here, we first reported a competitive adsorption strategy for the construction of SnO(2) nanoparticles doped with Ru single‐atoms supported on carbon (Ru SAs‐SnO(2)/C) via atomic galvanic replacement. SnO(2) was introduced to regulate the strong interaction between Ru and OH(ad) by the competitive adsorption of OH(ad) between Ru and SnO(2), which alleviated the poisoning of Ru sites. As a consequence, the Ru SAs‐SnO(2)/C exhibited a low overpotential at 10 mA cm(−2) (10 mV) and a low Tafel slope of 25 mV dec(−1). This approach provides a new avenue to modulate the adsorption strength of active sites and intermediates, which paves the way for the development of highly active electrocatalysts.