Atomic-level design and construction of synergistic active centers are central to develop advanced oxygen electrocatalysts toward efficient energy conversion. Herein, an in situ construction strategy to introduce flexible redox sites of VNi centers onto Ni-based metal-organic framework (MOF) nanosheet arrays (NiV-MOF NAs) as a promising oxygen electrocatalyst is developed. The abundant redox VNi centers with flexible metal valence states of V+3/+4/+5 and Ni+3/+2 enable NiV-MOF NAs excellent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity and a long-term stability under high current densities, achieving current densities of 10 and 100 mA cm-2 at recorded overpotentials of 189 and 290 mV, respectively, and showing ignorable decay of initial activity at 100 mA cm-2 after 100 h OER operation. Operando synchrotron radiation Fourier transform infrared combined with quasi in situ X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopies reveal at atomic level that the flexible V sites can continuously accept electrons from adjacent active Ni sites to accelerate OER kinetics for NiV-MOF NAs during the reaction process, accompanied by a self-optimized structural distortion of VO6 octahedron for promoting the electrochemical stability.
Keywords: NiV-MOF NAs; XAFS; in situ construction; operando SR-FTIR; water oxidation.
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