Recent Progress on Surface Reconstruction of Earth‐Abundant Electrocatalysts for Water Oxidation

As one important electrode reaction in electrocatalytic and photoelectrochemical cells for renewable energy circulation, oxygen catalysis has attracted considerable research in developing efficient and cost‐effective catalysts. Due to the inevitable formation of oxygenic intermediates on surface sites during the complex reaction steps, the surface structure dynamically evolves toward reaction‐preferred active species. To date, transition metal compounds, here defined as TM‐Xides, where “X” refers to typical nonmetal elements from group IIIA to VIA, including hydroxide as well, are reported as high‐performance oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts. However, more studies observe at least exterior oxidation or amorphization of materials. Thus, whether the TM‐Xides can be defined as OER catalysts deserves further discussion. This Review pays attention to recent progress on the surface reconstruction of TM‐Xide OER electrocatalysts with an emphasis on the identification of the true active species for OER, and aims at disseminating the real contributors of OER performance, especially under long‐duration electrocatalysis. Recent progress on the surface reconstruction of transition metal (TM)‐Xide oxygen evolution electrocatalysts is detailed in this Review, with an emphasis on the identification of the true active species for water oxidation and the definition of TM‐Xides as precatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction.