Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution Using Metal-Organic Frameworks

Electrocatalytic oxygen evolution is a cornerstone reaction in water splitting and energy conversion technologies, yet it remains hampered by sluggish kinetics and high overpotentials. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as versatile platforms to address these challenges through their modular architectures, high porosity and abundant active sites. By tailoring ligand composition, introducing defects or missing linkers, and engineering nanoscale morphologies, researchers have enhanced electronic conductivity, maximised exposure of catalytically active centres and optimised adsorption energies of key intermediates. Strategies such as fabricating two-dimensional nanosheets, growing MOF arrays on conductive substrates and embedding MOFs within conductive matrices have led to large improvements in turnover frequency and long-term stability. These advances promise scalable pathways to efficient water electrolysis, metal–air batteries and other renewable energy applications, contributing to the global drive towards carbon-neutral fuel production.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated that ultrathin MOF nanosheet arrays grown via a dissolution–crystallisation mechanism deliver highly exposed metal centres and hierarchical porosity, achieving overpotentials as low as 240 mV at 10 mA cm−2 and robust operation over tens of thousands of seconds. A complementary strategy has introduced controlled missing linkers into layered-pillared cobalt MOFs, altering the local electronic structure and reducing the energy barrier for the rate-determining O–O bond formation, resulting in sub-250 mV overpotentials at 100 mA cm−2. More recently, confining nickel–iron MOFs between graphene multilayers has markedly boosted electrical conductivity and stabilised distorted metal–oxo species, driving record-low overpotentials near 106 mV at 10 mA cm−2 and sustaining performance over hundreds of hours.

Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution Using Metal-Organic Frameworks publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in electrocatalytic oxygen evolution using metal-organic frameworks across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Metal–Organic Framework (MOF): A crystalline porous material composed of metal ions coordinated to organic ligands, noted for high surface area and tunable structure.

Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER): The electrochemical process of generating O2 from water, a key half-reaction in water splitting technologies.

Overpotential: The additional potential beyond the thermodynamic requirement needed to drive an electrochemical reaction at a given rate.

Tafel slope: A parameter describing the relationship between overpotential and current density, indicative of reaction kinetics.

Turnover Frequency (TOF): The number of reactant molecules converted per catalytic site per unit time, measuring intrinsic catalytic activity.

References

1. Accelerating Oxygen Electrocatalysis Kinetics on Metal–Organic Frameworks via Bond Length Optimization. Nano-Micro Letters (2024).
2. Charge‐transfer‐regulated bimetal ferrocene‐based organic frameworks for promoting electrocatalytic oxygen evolution. Carbon Energy (2023).
3. Ultrathin metal-organic framework array for efficient electrocatalytic water splitting. Nature Communications (2017).
4. Missing-linker metal-organic frameworks for oxygen evolution reaction. Nature Communications (2019).
5. A NiCo-MOF nanosheet array based electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction. Nanoscale Advances (2020).
6. Exceptional catalytic activity of oxygen evolution reaction via two-dimensional graphene multilayer confined metal-organic frameworks. Nature Communications (2022).