Polyoxometalate-assisted synthesis of amorphous zeolitic imidazolate for efficient electrocatalytic oxygen evolution

The development of earth-abundant element-based highly active and efficient catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is crucial for sustainable energy conversion technologies. In this work, we successfully used the Ni-modified Keggin-type polyoxometalate ([PNi(H2O)W11O39]5-) as a precursor to chemically modify the zeolitic imidazolate framework ZIF 67 via a facile one-pot method. The resulting composite catalyst shows promising electrocatalytic OER performance in a 1M aqueous KOH solution with high faradaic efficiency. Higher reactivity is observed compared with several reference composites. This synthetic approach could provide access to designing a new class of highly reactive catalysts for targeted reactions.