Low-Crystalline Bimetallic Metal-Organic Framework Electrocatalysts with Rich Active Sites for Oxygen Evolution

Developing efficient, stable, and low-cost catalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is highly desired in water splitting and metal-air batteries. Transition metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as promising catalysts and have been intensively investigated especially due to their tunable crystalline structure. Unlike traditional strategies of tuning the morphology of well-crystalline MOFs, low-crystalline bimetallic MOFs are constructed via inducing exotic metal ions, and the formation process is revealed by experimental and theoretical methods. The low-crystalline bimetallic MOFs exhibit rich active sites due to local crystallinity and long-range disorder and deliver a small overpotential of 260 mV at 10 mA cm^-2, a low Tafel slope of 35 mV dec^-1, and a high Faradaic efficiency of 99.5% as oxygen evolution elecctrocatalysts. The work opens up a new avenue for the development of highly efficient earth-abundant catalysts in frontier potential applications.