Mo-Modified Transition Metal-Based Ribbons for Electrochemical Water Splitting: Mechanisms, Design Strategies, and...

Electrochemical water splitting powered by renewable electricity for high-purity green hydrogen production is recognized as a highly promising technology. Nevertheless, water electrolysis requires substantial overpotentials, posing a significant challenge for large-scale applications. Consequently, developing cost-effective and robust transition metal-based electrocatalysts operating at high current densities is imperative for the industrialization of electrocatalytic water splitting. Recently, ribbon-shaped electrocatalysts have garnered considerable attention due to their structural integrity, such as direct bonding, reduced contact resistance, and high aspect ratio, thereby providing a higher reactive surface area at a given porosity. To further boost the electrocatalytic performance of ribbon-shaped electrocatalysts, heteroatom doping is employed. In particular, n-type dopant Mo can effectively enhance catalytic activity by tuning electronic structures and accelerating charge transfer. This review summarizes recent advances in Mo-modified transition metal-based ribbon electrocatalysts, discussing the fundamentals of water electrolysis, evaluation parameters, and fabrication procedures. It also focuses on the dealloying fabrication technique, the four key effects of Mo doping, and multi-field applications. Finally, this review provides a concise summary of bottlenecks in deploying metal-doped electrocatalysts for sustainable large-scale water splitting and offers future development perspectives.