A new concept analogous to homogeneous catalysis to construct in-situ regenerative electrodes for long-term oxygen evolution reaction

Achieving in-situ regeneration of heterogeneous catalysts to solve the shedding and dissolution questions of catalysts loaded in electrode is significantly important for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, we propose a new concept analogous to homogeneous catalysis to construct in-situ regenerative electrodes to achieve long-term OER, in which the solution of metal salt dispersed in the alkaline electrolyte is considered as pre-catalysts to in-situ generate the active species on the surface of the current collector during OER. An uninterrupted OER process of 300 h at a high current density about 80 mA cm−2 is accomplished by the new method. Importantly, in the unique system, the liquid-phase dispersed metal salt in the electrolyte as pre-catalysts, which is analogous to homogenous catalysis system, guarantees the in-situ continuous regeneration of active species, and therefore can solve the shedding and dissolution questions of catalysts during OER, while the previously reported traditional methods cannot achieve the continuous process to solve the shedding and dissolution questions of catalysts during OER. It is expected that this work would open a novel avenue for solving the bottleneck problem of long-term continuous OER process.