Recent Progress on Surface Reconstruction of Earth‐Abundant Electrocatalysts for Water Oxidation

Abstract

The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201901980. As one important electrode reaction in electrocatalytic and photoelectrochemical cells for renewable energy circulation, oxygen catalysis has attracted considerable research in developing efficient and cost-effective catalysts.Due to the inevitable formation of oxygenic intermediates on surface sites during the complex reaction steps, the surface structure dynamically evolves toward reaction-preferred active species. To date, transition metal compounds, here defined as TM-Xides, where "X" refers to typical nonmetal elements from group IIIA to VIA, including hydroxide as well, are reported as highperformance oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts. However, more studies observe at least exterior oxidation or amorphization of materials. Thus, whether the TM-Xides can be defined as OER catalysts deserves further discussion. This Review pays attention to recent progress on the surface reconstruction of TM-Xide OER electrocatalysts with an emphasis on the identification of the true active species for OER, and aims at disseminating the real contributors of OER performance, especially under long-duration electrocatalysis.Oxygen Evolution Reaction www.advancedsciencenews.com

Adaptive Bifunctional Electrocatalyst of Amorphous CoFe Oxide @ 2D Black Phosphorus for Overall Water Splitting

“…The oxidation of low valent transition metal ions in transition metal oxides to higher valence states during OER usually provides the real catalytically active sites and promotes OER catalysis [30] . The amorphous structure shall promote oxidation of metal ions and create more active sites for OER, [31] which would enhance the adsorption of hydroxyl species (Figure S12d).…”

Molecular and heterogeneous water oxidation catalysts: recent progress and joint perspectives

“…Specifically, OER catalysts often undergo structural reconstruction during the electrochemical oxidation process, which further contributes to remarkable changes in the TOF. 261 In this case, the change in the electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) should be considered for a fair comparison. In other cases, the degradation of nanoparticles under the OER conditions turned out to be the limiting factor for the system stability and performance.…”

Efficient Water Splitting Actualized through an Electrochemistry‐Induced Hetero‐Structured Antiperovskite/(Oxy)Hydroxide Hybrid

“…[ 20 ] This result is coincident with the Pourbaix diagrams (e.g., potential‐pH diagrams), concluding that (oxy)hydroxide species is the most stable state under the harsh OER condition. [ 21 ] In order to confirm the structure and composition of EO‐InNNi 3 , detailed characterizations were carried out. As shown in Figure a, the TEM image clearly displays a clear interface in EO‐InNNi 3 (as marked with a white dashed line), implying a core–shell structure.…”