Lowering the kinetic barrier via enhancing electrophilicity of surface oxygen to boost acidic oxygen evolution reaction

The acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is essential for many renewable energy conversion and storage technologies. However, the high energy required to break the strong covalent O-H bond of H2O in acidic media results in sluggish OER kinetics. Here, we report the critical role of iron in a new family of iron-containing yttrium ruthenate (Y2-xFexRu2O7-δ) electrocatalysts in highly increasing the electrophilicity of surface oxygen, leading to a significant reduction of the kinetics barrier by 33%, thus an exceptional OER mass activity of 1,021 A·gRu−1 up to 12.4 and 7.7 times that of Y2Ru2O7-δ and RuO2, respectively. Introducing iron reduces the Mulliken atomic charge on the O sites in the generated Ru-O-Fe structure, thereby facilitating the acid-base nucleophilic assault from H2O and reducing the free energy on the rate-determining step of OER. This work provides an effective strategy to reduce the kinetics barrier to achieve highly efficient and economic OER in acidic conditions.