Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) remains the bottleneck of many energy transformation and storage technologies due to the sluggish kinetics. Transition-metal (TM) hydroxide nanosheets with high-valent TM ions possess high intrinsic catalytic activity toward OER. Herein, by taking advantage of the inductive effect, this work presents a facile and universal strategy to fabricate atomic iridium (Ir) incorporated TM hydroxide nanosheets as highly active OER electrocatalysts. As a representative, the fabricated Ir-Ni(OH)₂ (4 wt.% Ir) exhibits remarkable OER performance with a low overpotential (235 mV at 10 mA cm^-2), a small Tafel slope (58.4 mV dec^-1), and excellent durability (60 h) in alkaline solution, significantly outperforming the benchmark IrO₂ and Ni(OH)₂. Mechanism studies unveil that the inductive effect between Ni and Ir endows Ni(OH)₂ with high-valent Ni species, which facilitate the adsorption of nucleophilic intermediates and boost the OER activity and long-term stability of Ir-Ni(OH)₂. More importantly, the reported strategy could be extended to synthesize other monometallic/bimetallic TM hydroxide nanosheets (Co, CoMn) as highly efficient OER electrocatalysts. This work should pave a universal and promising avenue to rationally design and controllably synthesize efficient yet robust OER electrocatalysts in energy-related fields.

由于动力学迟缓，放氧反应（OER）仍然是许多能量转换和存储技术的瓶颈。具有高价TM离子的过渡金属（TM）氢氧化物纳米片具有对OER的高固有催化活性。在此，通过利用感应效应，这项工作提出了一种简便而通用的策略来制备掺有原子铱（Ir）的TM氢氧化物纳米片作为高活性OER电催化剂。作为代表，制造的Ir-Ni（OH）₂（4 wt。％Ir）表现出显着的OER性能，具有低过电势（在10 mA cm ^-2时为235 mV ），小的Tafel斜率（58.4 mV dec ^-1） ，并且在碱性溶液中具有出色的耐久性（60小时），明显优于基准IrO ₂和Ni（OH）₂。机理研究表明，Ni和Ir之间的感应作用赋予Ni（OH）₂具有高价的Ni种类，这促进了亲核中间体的吸附并提高了Ir-Ni（OH）₂的OER活性和长期稳定性。更重要的是，已报道的策略可以扩展为合成其他单金属/双金属TM氢氧化物纳米片（Co，CoMn）作为高效的OER电催化剂。这项工作应为在能源相关领域合理设计和可控制地合成高效而坚固的OER电催化剂铺平道路，并为该领域铺平道路。