Perovskite oxides for electrocatalytic hydrogen/oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

Since the excessive exploitation of fossil fuels will cause wars for oil, developing sustainable and eco-friendly energy resources to solve the energy crisis and realize the carbon-neutrality goal has been a hot issue. Water electrolysis has been acknowledged as a promising technology for hydrogen (H2)/oxygen (O2) evolution reaction (HER/OER) since the overall water splitting reaction rates can be well controlled by applying appropriate electrode voltage. Whereas the sluggish electrochemical reactions kinetics on both the cathode and anode have greatly restricted the energy conversion efficiency. Thus, developing highly active electrocatalysts to reduce the overpotentials required for electrolytic HER/OER is of great significance in increasing the utilization rates of electrical power and lowering production costs. ABO3-structured perovskite-oxides based electrocatalysts possess the merits of low cost, high structural stability, and lattice compatibility, and thus they have attracted intense research attention in recent decays. To inspire both theoretical and experimental researchers to design novel perovskite-oxide electrocatalysts for efficient HER/OER, the fundamental electrode reaction mechanisms, the effects of synthetic methods on material morphologies, recently reported perovskite-oxide electrocatalysts and effective tuning strategies on enhancing the electrocatalytic activities of existing perovskite-oxides have been fully discussed in this review. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]