Recent progress on layered double hydroxides: comprehensive regulation for enhanced oxygen evolution reaction

Hydrogen production by electro-driven water splitting has opened up an era of obtaining high-purity hydrogen without carbon emissions, which has broad development prospects. However, the sluggish kinetic process of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) involving four-electron proton coupling severely limits the improvement of electro-driven water splitting efficiency. High-efficiency and stable OER electrocatalysts can significantly improve the electrocatalytic activity, thereby improving the efficiency of electrocatalytic water splitting. Particularly, layered double hydroxides (LDHs) have received widespread attention due to their unique layer-stacking structure, tunable chemical composition and diversity of anion filling. Here, this review summarizes the recent strategies to design LDHs, including regulation of geometric morphology, construction of heterostructure, regulation of crystallinity, modulation of LDH composition, vacancy engineering, surfactant modification and crystal plane engineering. Moreover, future research methods and directions on LDHs oxygen evolution catalysts are also discussed. These will provide guidance for designing efficient OER electrocatalysts and evaluating their performance.