Elevated Water Oxidation by Cation Leaching Enabled Tunable Surface Reconstruction.

Water electrolysis is one promising and eco-friendly technique for energy storage, yet its overall efficiency is hindered by the sluggish kinetics of oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Therefore, developing strategies to boost OER catalyst performance is crucial. With the advances in characterization techniques, an extensive phenomenon of surface structure evolution into an active amorphous layer was uncovered.

Electrochemical incorporation of heteroatom into surface reconstruction induced Ni vacancy of NiO nanosheet for enhanced water oxidation.

Surface reconstruction of non-oxide oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts has been intensively studied to improve their catalytic performances. However, further modification of the reconstructed active surfaces for better catalytic performances has not been reported. In this work, NiSe nanorods are prepared on nickel foam (NiSe@NF) as the pre-catalyst for electrochemical OER.

Stabilizing Oxygen Vacancy in Entropy-Engineered CoFeO-Type Catalysts for Co-prosperity of Efficiency and Stability in an Oxygen Evolution Reaction.

We used entropy engineering to design a series of CoFeO-type spinels. Through microstructural characterization, electrochemical measurements, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, we demonstrated that the entropy-stabilized oxide (CoMnNiFeZn)FeO has a single-phase spinel structure and exhibits both efficient and stable catalytic oxygen evolution. This is attributable to disordered occupation of multivalent cations, which induces severe lattice distortion and increases configurational entropy, thereby facilitating formation of structurally stable, high-density oxygen vacancies on the exposed surface of the spinel.