South Korean researchers have introduced a cheaper, more efficient way to produce clean green hydrogen.

A research team led by Professor Jinwoo Lee at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced a new water electrolysis catalyst built around an “atom-layer neighbor” architecture. The design gathers tiny groups of three or four ruthenium (Ru) atoms together into a single-atom-thick layer anchored to a tungsten carbide support.

Interestingly, the catalyst matches the hydrogen output of commercial platinum catalysts while slashing precious metal use by 75 percent. In a 500-hour continuous test, the catalyst proved highly durable, cutting performance degradation in half.

Water electrolysis uses renewable electricity to split water into low-emission green hydrogen and oxygen. High reliance on costly precious metal catalysts remains a major hurdle for this process. 

Hence, new technologies are needed that maintain high performance and even reduce expensive metal usage. The team developed a solution by arranging ruthenium atoms into tiny, efficient groups rather than large, wasteful clusters. 

In typical catalysts, precious metals form three-dimensional clusters. Most of the valuable metal stays buried inside the particle, completely isolated from the water it is meant to split. It is a wasteful design.

Scientists previously tried fixing this with “single-atom catalysts,” scattering individual metal atoms across a surface so every atom is exposed. But this design was also not completely beneficial. Splitting water isn’t a solo job; it requires multiple adjacent atoms to work together to move electrons and drive intermediate chemical steps. Single, isolated atoms simply can’t cooperate.

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