The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) represents one of the major bottlenecks for broad-based applications of many clean energy storage/conversion technologies. The key to solving this problem lies in developing high-performing, cost effective and stable catalysts for the OER. Herein, we demonstrate that ubiquitous stainless steel mesh (SSM) materials activated by a facile cathodization treatment can be employed as a high performing OER catalyst, as showcased by the impressively low overpotentials of 275 and 319 mV to reach the benchmark current densities of 10 and 100 mA cm⁻² (1.0 M KOH), respectively. Cathodized SSM also exhibits excellent performance in a two-electrode water electrolyzer, which requires a low cell voltage of 1.58 at 10 mA cm⁻² and outperforms many of water electrolyzers using earth-abundant OER catalysts. Moreover, cathodized SSM with minor performance degradation after the stability test can also be readily healed by subjecting it to an additional cathodization treatment. It is disclosed that the superior performance of cathodized SSMs stems from the surface enrichment of OER active Ni (oxy)hydroxide, facile gas-bubble removal and transportation over the unique mesh-structured surfaces, while the abundant reservoir of nickel in the bulk allows healing of the catalyst by a facile cathodization.

放氧反应（OER）代表了许多清洁能源存储/转换技术广泛应用的主要瓶颈之一。解决此问题的关键在于为OER开发高性能，经济高效且稳定的催化剂。本文中，我们证明了通过简便的阴极化处理活化的无处不在的不锈钢网（SSM）材料可以用作高性能的OER催化剂，如275和319 mV的超低电势足以达到10和10的基准电流密度所证明的那样。分别为100 mA cm ^-2（1.0 M KOH）。阴极化SSM在两电极水电解槽中也表现出卓越的性能，该电解槽要求在10 mA cm ^-2时电池电压低至1.58并比使用大量富含稀土的OER催化剂的许多电解水机性能要好。此外，通过对其进行额外的阴极氧化处理，也可以很容易地治愈稳定性测试后性能降低的阴极氧化SSM。据揭示，阴极SSMs的卓越性能源于OER活性镍（氧）氢氧化物的表面富集，易于去除气泡并在独特的网状结构表面上进行运输，而大量的镍储量则可以治愈通过容易的阴极化制备催化剂。