Metal‐Organic Frameworks and their Applications in Hydrogen and Oxygen Evolution Reactions

The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) play a vital role in many energy storage and conversion systems, including water splitting, rechargeable metal‐air batteries, and the unitized regenerative fuel cells. The noble‐metal catalysts based on Pt, Ir, and Au are the best electrocatalysts for the HER/OER, but they suffer from high price and scarcity problems. Therefore, it is urgently necessary to develop efficient, low‐cost, and environment‐friendly non‐noble metal electrocatalysts. Metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline materials with porous network structure. MOFs possess various compositions, large specific surface area, tunable pore structures, and they are easily functionalized. MOFs have been widely studied and applied in many fields, such as gas adsorption/separation, drug delivery, catalysis, magnetism, and optoelectronics. Recently, MOFs‐based electrocatalysts for HER/OER have been rapidly developed. These MOFs‐based catalysts exhibit excellent catalytic performance for HER/OER, demonstrating a promising application prospect in HER/OER. In this chapter, the concept, structure, category, and synthesis of MOFs will be first introduced briefly. Then, the applications of the MOFs‐based catalysts for HER/OER in recent years will be discussed in details. Specially, the synthesis, structure, and catalytic performance for HER/OER of the MOFs‐based catalysts will be emphatically discussed.