Fig. 1

Structural characterizations of Ru-N-C. a Representative HAADF-STEM image of Ru-N-C catalyst. b Magnified HAADF-STEM image of Ru-N-C form the highlighted area of (a), showing that the only bright dots corresponding to isolated Ru atoms exist in Ru-N-C. c Intensity profiles along the lines X–Y in (b). d The Ru k-edge k2-weighted Fourier transform spectra for Ru foil, RuCl3, RuO2, and Ru-N-C. e N K-edge XANES of pristine N-C and Ru-N-C catalysts. f The R-space curve-fitting of ex situ Ru-N-C. Top and bottom curves are magnitude and imaginary part, respectively. Insert shows the structure of the Ru site in Ru-N-C. The balls in gray, blue, and light green represent C, N, and Ru atoms, respectively