Crystalline Structural Engineering of an Electrical Insulator Into A Highly-Active Electrocatalyst for Oxygen...

The development of highly efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is crucial for water splitting. Due to flexible lattice structure and tunable electronic properties, perovskite oxides are considered promising candidates for oxygen evolution catalysts. In this work, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is employed to fabricate well-defined amorphous SrRuO₃ (SRO) films (insulator) on a glassy carbon (GC) substrate as the OER catalyst, demonstrating superior OER catalytic activity compare with crystalline SRO. The mechanism is also investigated by which oxygen partial pressure affects the activity of amorphous SRO. Changes in oxygen partial pressure can affect the content of oxygen vacancies and active site valence in amorphous SRO, with these factors working in concert to regulate the OER activity of the films. Furthermore, it is provide evidence that amorphous SRO can trigger a self-adaptive process, which plays a crucial role in electrochemical reaction. This findings suggest that amorphous structure engineering can be an effective and versatile strategy for designing next-generation high-performance catalysts for OER applications.