Designing coordinatively unsaturated metal sites in bimetallic organic frameworks for oxygen evolution reaction

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are developing as promising catalysts for oxygen evolution reactions. A bimetallic electrocatalyst MOF using Ni and Cu as metal sources and 1,4-benzene dicarboxylic acid as a linker has been synthesized and evaluated for oxygen evolution reaction. Compared to monometallic MOFs, bimetallic MOFs participate more actively in electrocatalysis due to the higher abundance of active sites, local crystallinity, and lower long-range disorder. When utilized as oxygen evolution catalysts, Ni–Cu MOFs have a low overpotential of 340 mV at 10 mA/cm2 and a low Tafel slope of 65 mV/dec. The study paves the way for the development of highly efficient catalysts for water splitting applications.