Water-Stable Cobalt-Based MOF for Water Oxidation in Neutral Aqueous Solution: A Case of Mimicking the Photosystem II

Inspired by the highly efficient water oxidation of Mn4CaO5 in natural photosynthesis, development of novel artificial water oxidation catalysts (WOCs) with structure and function mimicked has inspired extensive interests. A novel 3D cobalt-based MOF (GXY-L8-Co) was synthesized for promising artificial water oxidation by employing the Co4O4 quasi-cubane motifs with a similar structure as the Mn4CaO5 as the core. The GXY-L8-Co not only shows good chemical stability in common organic solvents or water for up to 10 days but also exhibits oxygen evolution performance. It has been demonstrated that the uniform distribution of Co4O4 catalytic active sites confined in the MOF framework should be responsible for the good robustness and catalytic performance.

Automated summary

Inspired by natural photosynthesis, a novel 3D cobalt-based MOF (GXY-L8-Co) with good chemical stability and oxygen evolution performance was synthesized for artificial water oxidation. It has been shown that the uniform distribution of catalytic active sites in the MOF framework plays a key role in enhancing catalytic performance.