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

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 high-performance 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.