Defect Engineering in Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reactions

Defect engineering has emerged as a powerful strategy to tailor the activity and stability of electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction and evolution reactions. By intentionally introducing vacancies, heteroatom dopants, lattice distortions and low‐coordination edge sites, researchers can modulate the local electronic structure and optimise adsorption energies of key intermediates. Such precision tuning enhances charge transfer kinetics, lowers overpotentials and prolongs operational durability. Defect‐rich materials span a wide range of platforms, from perovskite and spinel oxides to two‐dimensional chalcogenides and doped carbon frameworks, demonstrating the breadth of approaches available. Advances in synthetic control and in situ characterisation now enable atomic-level insight into defect formation and catalytic function, paving the way for rational design of next-generation energy conversion devices.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have shown that engineered oxygen vacancies in perovskite oxides significantly improve oxygen reduction kinetics by tuning the eg electron occupancy and optimising the binding strength of OOH intermediates, leading to enhanced half-wave potentials and prolonged stability in alkaline conditions. Another investigation demonstrated that single-metal-atom doping combined with adjacent vacancy pairs in two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenides creates uniformly distributed active sites for the oxygen evolution reaction. These materials exhibit low overpotentials and remarkable durability under neutral and alkaline electrolyte environments, emphasising the value of atomic-scale defect precision.

Defect Engineering in Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reactions publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in defect engineering in electrocatalytic oxygen reactions across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR): The electrochemical process in which molecular oxygen is reduced to water or hydroxide ions, commonly occurring in fuel cells.

Oxygen evolution reaction (OER): The electrochemical oxidation of water to molecular oxygen, a key half-reaction in water-splitting systems.

Oxygen vacancy: A point defect characterised by the absence of an oxygen atom in the crystal lattice, which modifies the local electronic environment and catalytic behaviour.

Heteroatom doping: The deliberate introduction of foreign atoms (for example nitrogen or phosphorus) into a host material to adjust its electronic properties and catalytic performance.

Single-atom catalyst: A catalyst design in which isolated metal atoms are anchored on a support, maximising atom efficiency and creating distinct active sites.

References

1. Defect engineering in transition‐metal (Fe, Co, and Ni)‐based electrocatalysts for water splitting. Carbon Energy (2024).